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...

Being on a goat farm all sounds like lots of fun and cute, but the reality is slightly different: summer is the time to make hay. And hay is what gets the goats all through the coming winter. No playing around, it is hard work and hay-making time. Michael has several meadows up above the village, so we hop in the jeep and drive up the steep gravel-rocky-windy road for about 20 minutes and arrive at one field that Michael had mowed that morning. Now the sun is out (11-11:30am) so we can start the second step after mowing: spreading the cut grass. Normally a machine can do it, but on these very steep hills with rocks here and there, the machine can't reach everywhere. So we each take a fork and start spreading: you can (sort of) see the rows of the cut grass and the goal is to pick up the grass (that is still packed and wet) and kind of shake it and spread around. Why? So it can be aired out and dry better in the sun in the next couple days before it can be collected. Hay needs to...

After a weekend back in Basel of unpacking and repacking, taking care of items on my check-list and also seeing a couple friends and enjoying the nice weather, here I am, back on the 'road' by train and bus, direction Graubünden in the Swiss Alps. The ride is spectacular, already starting from Walensee between Zurich and Chur, looking out on the left side window: the deep blue lake and huge rocky mountains approaching Walenstadt. Starting from Chur it just gets better and better and the final bus rides approaching Andeer and Ausserferrera are spectacular, going quite steeply up a narrow stretch along a turquoise river and rock formations and high cliffs.  Getting off at the bus stop in the little village of Ausserferrera, Michael, the farm owner with whom I exchanged a few short messages on Workaway and Whatsapp, walks up and shows me to my new home for the next 2 weeks, with him and Nicole and another volunteer from Australia, Lauren. At first glance the village seems t...