Spring Break, pt. 2: Global Creek

So, as I mentioned in the last post, the house we rented for spring break was, unbeknownst to us before arriving, located on a 13-hectare organic permaculture cacao farm called Global Creek. Throughout our five-day stay there, we learned more about exactly what was going on there, and even ended up doing some volunteer work at the end of the week.

So, Global Creek started out in a different location on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica with Ahki, the current manager of the property in Cocles. He graduated from college in Canada and, after working for a while helping businesses become more sustainable, came to Costa Rica to do volunteer work at some places that had reputations of being very ecologically-conscious and sustainable. When he arrived, however, he says he was disappointed in the discrepancies between how the places were marketed to people and how they actually operated. Thus, the idea for Global Creek, a sustainable business that integrates permaculture, sustainability, environmental education and "life learning," was born. He met someone with some extra land that Ahki began to watch and develop the business plan. Somewhere during that time the owner of the current Global Creek property found out about Ahki's business and mission and invited him to manage his piece of land. The owner built three houses on the property... one for Ahki to live in, one for a couple from the U.S. that processes the cacao and makes gourmet chocolate, and one for volunteers to live in while working on the farm. The last house is the one we stayed in, because they rent it to vacationers in between volunteer groups. 

The reason we couldn't rent the house for the rest of the week was because the property owner's daughter and sister-in-law were coming down to Costa Rica. They originally were supposed to be interviewed for a news documentary about sustainable business, but the filming got postponed until later this year and they decided to come down anyway since they had already booked their flights. The owner's family was only using the second-floor apartment, though, so the downstairs (where my bedroom was) was still available. There is also a "jungle hut," aka a screened-in platform with three beds on it, near Akhi's house. These were the two places we were allowed to stay for our extra time. The deal Ahki offered us was to continue staying on the property for free for as many more days as we wanted, as long as we helped him out 3-4 hours a day since they were in between volunteer groups. Normally even volunteers have to pay $5 a night to stay, so this was an extremely generous offer for him to make! 

The first day, we all stayed over together. Some people payed their way by working on the farm, but I helped thoroughly clean the upstairs apartment to prepare for the arrival of the next guests. I was planning on staying another night afterward and then going to Cahuita, a beach 30 minutes north of Puerto Viejo, for the last day. However, I checked my email after cleaning the house and saw that Chesca wanted to meet us in Cahuita and that she was already there with her boyfriend and was only staying until Saturday morning. I decided that I would take the bus to Cahuita at 2 pm on Friday to try and catch Chesca before she left, and volunteer in the morning even though I wouldn't be staying over another night. Because I had talked to Ahki about it already and because I was curious to learn more about the cacao farm, it felt like a reasonable way to do that without standing up Chesca. 

So, Friday morning I got up early and met Ahki at the rancho to start working. A few other people were staying to volunteer, and the rest left for Cahuita early that morning. We split up the tasks, but in the first hour or so I got to hear a little about all the different projects from Ahki. Matt and Justin were working on building compost piles from yard debris and horse manure donated from a local animal rehabilitation center. The design of the piles allows the material to reach very high temperatures inside very quickly, so everything breaks down relatively fast. The piles are circular and large, but with space enough to walk in between, because when the composting is complete you have a raised bed in which to plant things. Ahki's goal is to make Global Creek more sustainable by growing all of the food for himelf and all volunteers that come to stay there. He currently doesn't buy food, but instead gets it by bartering with local farmers. While this is extremely cheap compared to normal food purchasing, Global Creek was founded with zero startup, so having gardens with rich soils to grow vegetables will make it both more ecologically and financially sustainable.

Three compost piles in various states of decomposition. When the mandala gardens are finished, Ahki expects them to be sufficiently productive to feed up to twelve people at all times.

After we learned about the compost piles and their sustainability goals, Ahki told us a bit about the beginning of the chocolate-making process. Cacao pods contain purple (yes, purple!) seeds encased in a sweet, tangy, white flesh. Both of these parts are edible raw, and I got to try them. The cacao seeds themselves are (expectedly) very bitter, but tasty. Compared to processed chocolate, they are much healthier because they have high concentrations of antioxidants, and three little seeds give about the same caffeine as an espresso shot. Snacking on them made me feel much more optimistic about working in the grove so early in the morning! Haha. The flesh is soft and juicy, and surprisingly good. If you eat the flesh and the seed together, the sweetness and the bitterness balance out a bit in an interesting taste combination. Apparently cacao seeds were a popular snack way back when, and travelers spitting out the seeds after eating the flesh may have played a role on how cacao arrived in Central America. 

A cacao pod cut open in a cross-section. The white part is the sweet flesh, and the bitter purple bean is inside.

Ahki also told us about the first steps that transform raw cacao into chocolate First, the fruit is fermented holes dug into the earth and lined with banana leaves. The fermentation gets rid of the flesh and begins changing the bean into its pre-chocolate form. Then the beans get dried in the sun, kind of like coffee. After that, the family living in the other house on the property makes them into high-quality chocolate and sells it in a small shop in town. 

Cacao beans drying in the sun

After the background information about the farm and the chocolate-making, we got down to business. Ahki explained to us how about 40 years ago, a fungus spread all throughout Central American cacao plants, killing the pods and driving many plantations out of business. The property that Global Creek is on now actually used to be an abandoned cacao plantation, which is why there are so many cacao trees there! No plants are naturally resistant to the fungus, so most commercial cacao is grown with lots of fungicide to stop infection. Because the cacao here is grown organically, anywhere from 0% to over 70% of the pods on each tree are infected and can't be used in chocolate-making.

Cacao pods with varying degrees of white pod rot

Because the fungal spores spread the infections, Ahki and volunteers periodically go through the cacao groves and pick the rotting pods to try to prevent the fungus from spreading. He is currently trying to figure out whether or not this significantly decreases the frequency of infection, so they are managing different plots on the farm to varying degrees. I helped out in one of the more managed sections, delicately removing pods with a fruit picker to minimize the number of spores knocked into the air. I thought that the work was actually pretty fun, although after a while it gets tiresome to crane your neck backwards and constantly look upwards, searching for white pods. I worked with Ellen, and after a few hours we had collected a good amount (maybe half of a potato sack) of rotten cacao.

The cacao grove I worked in

After we finished our morning of volunteering, we headed back to the rancho to make lunch. Since we had already cleaned out the downstairs apartment of the house, we didn't want to dirty the kitchen again and instead used the rancho's outdoor communal kitchen that Ahki and volunteers use. The rancho has an even better view of the sea than our deck at the house did, so it was lovely to sit around and enjoy it while eating my bean and cheese sandwich.

Tessa in the kitchen, making pasta

The view from the rancho

About half of the remaining group had left on the early bus to Cahuita, so Rukhshana, Tessa, Ellen and I were hanging around the rancho by ourselves. We thought that Ahki had left to take the guests to an indigenous market in a nearby national park, but to our surprise the landowner's daughter and sister-in-law showed up at the rancho while we were eating lunch. We got to meet them and talk for a little bit. Eventually Ahki came up, too, and we realized that they had called off their trip because they missed the bus while waiting for a delivery, and the only taxi driver that could take them there never showed up at the house. So, we all ended up hanging out for a little bit, and they got to learn about OTS and our program. Ahki knew we were all students, but was intrigued to learn that in our courses we'd spent a good deal of time visiting farmers. The landowner's relatives were also very intrigued, and ended up having us pose for some publicity photos to put on their website. It was a little weird having to pretend to pick cacao and shovel out trails, especially since we had been doing it for real justtwo hours earlier, but they were very excited to make a connection with a student group that could potentially send volunteers back in the future, so we obliged them.

After our busy morning and unexpected lunchtime activities, we finally headed out to catch the 2 pm bus to Cahuita. Tessa, Ellen, Rukhshana and I left together to try to meet up with the rest of our friends although we had no idea where they were staying and had no phones or anything to contact them. Two of our friends had already left for San Jose to spend time with siblings visiting from the U.S. The remaining two of the group, Matt and Justin, decided to spend the rest of spring break in Puerto Viejo for free and keep volunteering at Global Creek.

The "jungle hut" where Justin and Matt stayed

We said our goodbyes to Ahki, who wished us well and invited us to return in the future, and got in a taxi (4 x 4 this time!) that drove us from our house to the bus station in Puerto Viejo, where we began the final leg of our spring break adventures.

Tessa and I waiting (sweatily) at the bus stop in Puerto Viejo