Buenas dias! I’m writing this in an internet cafe in Puriscal, the larger town a two and a half hour bus ride away from the farm. A bunch of us made the trip today for money and junk food.

God, it feels like I’ve been gone forever and not at all, and theres just so much to tell you about its sort of ridiculous. In five days Ive become someone who wakes up before sunrise and goes to bed at 8, who rides in the back of pickup trucks and climbs waterfalls and plays pool in bars with thatched roofs. But lets start from the beginning.

I flew in to San Jose at 4:40 and emerged into the tropical choas to find Javier. I searched the milling, yelling crowd for my name on a sign and came up empty. Well shit. I thanked my lucky stars that I had remembered to copy down the contact number he had sent me in his last email and retreated to a corner to call. I could barely hear over the multilingual yelling going on behind me, but a voice that sounded vaguely french told me that Javiers car had broken down and he would not be coming today. They recommended I stay in a hostel called The Maleteque where Javier could meet me the next morning.

Okay then. I found a uniformed cab driver standing at a kiosk and asked him if he could take me there. He had never heard of it. This went back and forth, me running off to call the farm and call my frantic mother in the quiet of the duty free shop and running back to talk to the cabbie. I trusted him. First of all he was in uniform, always an important thing to take note of, there are a lot of unofficial cab drivers in this world, and secondly he had really kind eyes, and every time I would come running over he would break off whatever conversation he was having to smile ruefully as I panicked at him. It got dark. Eventually I just threw my hands up and said “Can you please just take me to the closest hotel thats less than $100 a night?”

He drove like the world was ending and he didn’t want to live. Whenever a car dared to be in front of us he would move over to the half paved shoulder, lining up the wheels so potholes you could lower a coffin into passed squarely beneath our wheels. Finally we pulled up in front of a low green stucco building- La Guaria Inn and Suites. I was still shaken up, and immediately suspicious when he got out to take me inside. But what else could I do? He kissed the lady behind the counter on both cheeks and shook my hand before saying “Good luck chica, everything will be okay.” My room was clean and empty, with a heavy door that locked, which was the sum total of what I wanted at that point. I watched 3 hours of Friends with Spanish subtitles and called the farm before I fell asleep to give them the address, praying to all the gods I could think of that Javier would show up.

Everything looks better in the morning. The hotel I thought was sketchy that night was actually bright and buzzing with families, and best of all they had complimentary breakfast. I cant say I`ve ever been so happy to see white bread and fruit loops. And Javier did show up! In a beat up white Toyota truck. He jumped out and gave me a big hug, with not a word about not showing yesterday.

Things work differently here, as I have to keep reminding myself. No ones on time and even the best laid plans blow up in your face at a seconds notice. And theres absolutely nothing to do but adapt.

Javier also subscribed to the “whats a passing lane?” school of driving. We chatted for a bit in the Spanish I knew (not much) and the English he did (more than he lets on, but he doesnt like to use it). I kept accidentally answering in French. Eventually we just lapsed into singing along to Metallica and Paramore (he loves Paramore, go figure) songs at the top of our lungs and smiling at eachother as we sped up gravel roads into the mountains.

When we pulled up outside the farm he smiled and winked and said “Bienvenido a tu nueva casa.” He grabbed some sheets and showed me to my bunk in the main dorm, which looks out over the valley and into the neighbouring mountains.

There really is no indoors here. The dorm is entirely open to the air, just a roof and strategically placed privacy walls in some cases, as is the kitchen, the dining room, El Rancho (the hammock-filled gazebo where we all hang out in the afternoons), the bathroom, showers, everything. A girl who was hanging out some clothes to dry when I arrived, Nicole, offered to show me around. She took me around the main site and down to where the pigs, chickens, cows and the hyrdoponic system emptying out in a tilapia pond all live. I introduced myself to Javiers wife, Raquel, and his two year old, Andres, as well as Nick, whos from Colorado but lives at Villas half the year and functions as Javiers foreman and translator.

Another volunteer, Boo, said he was walking to the cafe in town and I was welcome to join him. Town is about a 20 minute walk away, and consists of about 5 building, one of which is the little cafe, a wooden hut (also open to the air) that sells pop and icecream and assorted junk food. The family was watching Telemundo in the corner, and Boo and I talked about life and Africa and Sherlock before heading home.

The food is awesome here. Most of it comes straight from the farm, and rice and beans are a constant. Nothing processed at all. Im begining to think of this whole experience as a cleanse. After dinner we sat around a big bonfire that Boo had built and I got to know the other volunteers. Theres about 15 of us right now, but it changes all the time, and people stay anywhere from a week to many months.

Usually days at the farm start with with breakfast at 7, a meeting in El Rancho, then work from 8 till lunch at noon, after which the rest of the day is yours. But my first day was a bit different because Javiers beans that he grows in a feild on a neighbour’s farm were ready to harvest. As such, we had to roll out of bed at 5, inhale breakfast and coffee and pile into the back of the pickup truck to head to the feild. The wind woke us up, and the mist rising of the mountains in the sunrise was beautiful.

The field was quite a hike away from where we had to park the car. We wound our way through the forest down to the base of the valley, shucked our shoes to wade through the river at its base, and then climbed the steep hill through a stand of cacao trees to the other side. The feild itself was actually on a very steep, south-east facing hill for maximum sun exposure. When its time to plant the beans, they walk up and scatter big handfuls of last years beans all over the hillside, then come back with machetes to cut down all the brush. This gives the beans enough natural compost and shade to take root, and when the rest of the plants start to grow back, the bean vines wind their way up up the stalks. The mixture of vegetation in the feild also helps maintain a balance of nutrients in the soil. When the beans are ready, the pod that holds them becomes all brown and dried out, making it easy to remove the little red beans inside.

Harvesting was hard work, partly because slope was so steep that half the time I had to dig into the undergrowth like I was rockclimbing. We were pulling out all the bean vines with the pods still attached, then when we had accumulated a few, we bundled them up into balls that we left to dry in the sun. Afterwards we went back over the area we had picked to collect all the pods we had dropped, which we brought home with us in rice sacks and have been eating ever since.

We were working with two ticos- Carlos and Randal. Carlos helps Javier pick for a share of the beans, as he doesn’t have any land of his own. I think Randal gets paid but I actually have no idea. They think my name is hilarious because when they say it, it sounds like Casi, which is the Spanish word for almost. My name here is effectively Almost. When we took breaks in the shade of the banana trees at the botton of the hill where we had left our water and bags, they pulled pineapples from plants nearby and cut them up on plates of banana leaves with machetes as easily as if the massive knives were an extension of their arms.

When I thought I was about ready to collapse, Javier brought us all in and told us that we could be done, we’d just have to come finish tomorrow (Saturday) and take Sunday and Monday off instead. We walked back down to the river, stripped to our underwear and jumped in, spending the next hour playing in the current and the small waterfalls upstream before making the hike back up hill to the truck. It felt like it was about 6 o’clock but it wasnt even noon.

Lunch becomes the biggest meal of the day on the farm, as its the one you work the hardest for before we take our lazy afternoons off. I spent mine reading in a hammock, shelling beans on the floor of the dining room and learning how to make drinking glasses from old beer bottles. They cut them by turning them around neatly in a holder with a glass cutter mounted into it with a clamp, turning the cut part of the bottle over a candle until it turns black, then dipping it in a bucket of water, letting the temperature change break the glass neatly so you can sand down the rim.

I had volunteered to help out with breakfast the next day, which meant an early start at 4:30 before heading back to the bean feild to finish up the job. Admitably, heading to bed at 8 the night before had made the wake up a bit easier. The work was easier that day because we knew what we were doing, and we finished up early to go back to the river and swim in a bigger waterfall a little farther up. On Tuesday we’ll go back and gather our vine piles and beat them on a tarp to get the beans out. This larger waterfall had all these deep natural pools carved out by the water, and the rock was smooth enough that we could slide off the side of one and into the other easily, like sea otters. Paradise.

That night we all decided to go take over the bar in town. Not hard seeing as its a 300 square foot wooden hut on the side of a mountain with a corrugated time roof. The owner, Giovanni, showed us bar tricks mostly involving the label of the local beer and national treasure- Imperial between passing out shots from his homemade stash of moonshine tequila that he keeps in a massive mayonaise jar. I stuck with the beer. His son and body double, Giovanni Jr. and friends dragged us down a succesion of gravel-filled oil drums functioning as steps  to the “basement”, the open space under the hut where they keep the pool table. The 12 year old pool sharks chalked the cues for us and we all played no rules, everyone taking a turn. Carlos works at the bar, and Randal and his brother showed up to relentlessly hit on all the gringas (white girls, re: us). Its a bit of a constant thing, but harmless, and I think just about all of us got a free beer out of it. The night ended with Whitney, a yoga teacher from California and certified jungle-woman, leading us in a spontaneous meditation session on the yoga deck. Perfect day.

Yesterday a bunch of us walked to another nearby waterfall that has a massive natural slide, and cliffs that you can jump off  into deep pools. I felt about ten years old, and a bit like Huckleberry Finn in the best way. I can’t believe this is my life. Cleo showed me around the herb garden, and Ive now taken to walking around with a mug picking hibiscus buds, mint and ressurecion to experiment making different kinds of tea. Helping with lunch meant walking through the salad garden with a plastic bowl of my hip picking catta and hibiscus leaves for some greens. I already feel so healthy, and its been what? Five days.

And now I’m here! That`ll have to be it for now, because I need to go meet everyone in the park so we can go grab some lunch before getting the bus back, but I’ll keep you updated on my Pura Vida life as soon as I possibly can! Hasta lluego!


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