Unfolding As I Go - Carole's travel blog

This is it, I'm on the plane, flying out of San Jose. Three months have passed already, my 90 days in Costa Rica are over. With tears in my eyes I realize how attached I have become to this country and how much I have experienced here. Initially I thought I had scheduled too much time here, but now, 3 months later, I feel it wasn't even enough. Let me stay! And actually, I could stay, just a short bus trip to Panama would have been enough to re-enter and get a new 90-day visa. But I know it is time to move on, it is important for me to keep going forward on my journey and stick to my next plans. And I'm also very much looking to what is ahead. On my first days in the Costa Rican jungle I didn't think I'd ever stand the heat and humidity for so long, but now I am very sad to leave and wish I could stay longer, much longer. This country gives me a feeling of richness, abundance, it is so alive. And it turns out that humidity is actually very beneficial f...

I could have spent my last days in Costa Rica partying and going out and visiting many things left to see, take that day-trip to the Irazu volcano or to the turtle beach, or I could have stayed longer in Puerto Viejo with friends or even gone back to Quepos for a day to see that special person I really like, but no, I'm doing what I really need and want to do right now, even if all the other things are so tempting and this is so hard to do: catching up on my blog! I am sitting here for hours in the hostel writing and documenting as much as I can about the permaculture course and days in and around Puerto Viejo and Cahuita. If I don't do it now, it will be even harder later. Here in the hostel, I can make the mental and physical space and have good wifi before I set off on the next adventures. Blogging and journalling has been a way for me to stay 'sane', centered and somewhat structured on this trip, helping me to keep the purpose of my journey in sight (somewhat...

This is us with our freshly delivered certificates: we all successfully completed a 72-hour Permaculture Design Course! We are now ready to go and find our piece of land and design it to live off of it almost self-sustainably! Well maybe not that fast but we did get initiated to all the tools needed to make it happen. We spent the last few days of the course designing our own farm on a piece of land on the property. We could decide where we put our house and every component needed to live the life we chose to design, for example: nursery, vegetable garden, compost, septic tank, biodigestor, chicken house, water collector, vegetable, herbs, grains, fruit trees, roots, etc. This definitely got me thinking what was my ideal life could look like and this includes a yoga shala, growing my own food and waking up in nature. I would just propbably need a place that is less humid and less hot! I haven't been able to describe in these blog posts everything that we learned because it...

On this plate you see h omemade kimchi, greens from  katuk ,  cranberry hibiscus  leaves and  moringa , served with a passion fruit dressing, vegetable/bean curry and  job's tear  grain from the farm. I needed a post just about the food, because every single meal was just incredibly delicious during these 2 weeks. And the best part is that almost all of what was on our plate came directly from the farm: the vegetable beds, the fruit trees, the bushes and even the weeds. Ana is such a good cook, she can make anything taste delicious. And of course Gricelda who was cooking for us every meal with such love and care. Everything was vegetarian and highly nutricious, I never got hungry, went for seconds every time! Curry made from 3 different roots from the farm: taro, yucca and breadfruit   A delicious buffet everyday  Yucca root, prepared for the meal below  Boiled yucca with garlic plant pesto, pickled oigno...

Day 5 activity: planting yucca on a pre-prepared bed then preparing another vegetable bed for future use then planting a whole new bed of sweet potatoes. What a morning! and all this with occasional rain showers. But as you see in the pictures, we are having fun, taking turns so we don't get too exhausted. Digging in that wet soil is hard! We eventually manage to dig all the trenches we need, add dead wood to them and cover it back up: they will be the paths between the vegetable rows full of organic matter decomposing from the wood, acting as a nutrient source for the future vegetables.  In the rows we plant vetiver grass, it will grow its deep roots down to 5 meters, then after a few months, it will be all cut down, layed down as mulch on the ground, covered with a shake cloth and let to rest for another few months for all the materials to decompose. Then take off the shake cloth and, voila! you have turned a fully clay soil into nutrient-rich soil to grow delicious vege...