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This is a continuation of my post about working on a farm in Costa Rica that you can find here.
The last post covered the basics of the farm - the journey to the farm, the people, the space, our daily schedule, and the work. In this post I am going to cover the adventures we had while living on the farm. I hope you enjoy!
The Food Adventures
There is nothing I love more than organic meals straight from the garden (okay maybe there are a few things I love more, like my family, boyfriend, and chocolate, but it's a close contender). The food at Villa Mastatal was served family style. We had breakfast at 6:00 am, lunch at 12:00 pm, and dinner at 6:00 pm. Each meal shift had two volunteers preparing the meal along with Raquel, one of the owners of the farm.
Breakfast usually consisted of coffee, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, left over gallo pinto (rice and beans) from dinner, and a fruit salad of watermelon, pineapple, and papaya. Yum!
Lunch usually consisted of a salad of garden greens (hibiscus leaves, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, kale), fried plantains, rice and beans, and potatoes.
Dinner was a toss up, and it was completely up to the volunteers' imagination what they would cook for the evening. One of my evenings I cooked a pureed curry soup of potatoes, carrots, and onions with cilantro and curry powder. I paired it with a spinach quiche. For desert I fried sweet plantains (platanos maduros) and made a green papaya, apple, and mint juice. Yes, dinner may have taken me over 3 hours to cook for 20 people. And yes, it was delicious ;-)
I mentioned that chocolate is one of my favorite things in the world. Well, we had our own chocolate dealer that would come to the farm! A nearby farm in the area was actually an organic chocolate farm called "La Iguana". They had a similar set up to Villas Mastatal where they provided a work exchange of 20 hours per week and a fee of $15 per day in exchange for complete room and board. They grew their own cocoa trees and their volunteers would process the beans and create chocolate products. They would mix spices that they grew in their herb garden into the chocolates for a variety of flavors. Every Tuesday and Friday the "Chocolate Dealer" would drive up in his motorbike with a cooler of chocolates to sell to us. We would later see the Chocolate Dealer in the local (and only) bar every time we visited and soon were informed that he was not only the Chocolate Dealer, but also the town drunk.
The Horseback Riding Adventures
We worked Monday through Friday from 8am to 12pm, so on the weekends we were free to explore the area. Villas Mastatal is in the middle of Parque Nacional La Cangreja, a national park of tropical forest in the Cordillera de Talamanca mountain range. Javier told us that his friend arranged horseback riding trips to a hidden waterfall. Brooke and I heard the words "horses" and "hidden waterfall" and were in.
On Saturday Brooke and I set out to find our guide and horses, and started riding through the hills, over rolling pastures, cutting through farms, and enjoying the open landscape. This waterfall sure was hidden - there was absolutely no way to find it without a guide as we cut through so many areas without a trail. The waterfall was spectacular, and we spent a good hour just sitting below it, treading our feet in the running stream below.
The Hike Up The Mountain
On Sunday Brooke, I, and several other volunteers had arranged to go on a hike with Javier. We were going to attempt to summit El Cerro La Cangreja. This peak was 1305 meters above sea level and from the top you could see the Pacific Ocean. We woke up at 5am, grabbed breakfast, and hopped in the back of Javier's truck. My favorite way of traveling around the area was sitting in the back of peoples' pickup trucks. It was exhilarating to feel the fresh wind on my face, the bugs smacking against my teeth, and my tailbone cracking each time the truck hit a pothole. We arrived at the trailhead just in time to see the most exquisite sunrise I have ever witnessed in my life. The sky seemed to be calling in life, the sun stretching out its rays, just touching the crescent moon still hanging in the sky.
We enjoyed the sunrise, and then headed to the trail. Actually, I take that back, I wouldn't necessarily call it a trail. What we found instead was an overgrown path that we literally had to pave the way through with machetes. It was so thick with brambles that we could not see further than 20 feet in front of us at points. Good thing we brought our machetes, giving our arms more of a workout than our legs on this hike. Though our legs did get quite a workout. The trail was up up up! We were exhausted but also exhilarated by the thick tropical forest. We reached the top by midday and opened our arms to the beautiful view ahead of us.
We found some jaguar scat, which was pretty exciting. The people of Mastatal town knew that there were a couple of jaguars in the area, but there has never been a siting of one. Javier wrapped the scat up to later be examined. We hung around the top, ate lunch, told stories, and stretched out our legs.
Farm Time
During the days we would work on the sugar cane press cover that I mentioned in my last post. We also...
- Built compost systems
- Worked on the "mushroom soup" for fertilizing
- Cleared trail paths to avoid people accidentally stepping on hidden poisonous
snakes - Built steps leading down to the community soccer field
- Filled in potholes on the main road
- Harvested veggies
- Planted veggies
- Worked on the aquaponics system, and more!
During the afternoons I spent three to four hours per day working on my Spanish through conversations with Javier, Raquel, and Andreas. I also used the apps, "Memrise" and "Duolingo". I had also had some Chilean poetry books that I translated into English. We were living the hammock life, relaxing in the slow sway of the weaved cotton.
A Thank You
Time seemed to slow down at Villas Mastatal, and it felt good. No more running from hostel to hostel, no more city pollution and traffic jams, just the simple swing of hammocks and the swish of machetes. We all worked together, ate together, and smiled together. We were all working on the same project - to become a positive impact on the land we lived on. Through working on a permaculture farm, I found the definition of permaculture - permanent culture. I dug roots into a local community and dug roots into the land. And I want to say a big thank you to the Villas Mastatal family for creating this oasis of opportunity and learning. Pura Vida!
