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

Spring Break, pt. 1: Puerto Viejo

For spring break, twelve of us rented a house in Puerto Viejo on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Because Ethan's birthday was on Friday, we decided not to leave San Jose until Saturday morning, and to go out Friday night to celebrate since he and most of the other OTS students were going to Bocas del Toro, Panama for the break. Almost everyone in our house was taking the 10 am bus out of San Jose, I took the early bus to get out to Puerto Viejo with a reasonable amount of time on the beach. It was Mary's last weekend in Costa Rica, and we invited her to stay in our house since it had already been paid for, but since she had class on Monday she was only going to get one full day on the beach... hence our decision to leave at 6 am instead of 10. Tessa also decided to head out early with us, and we made it on time (barely! Mary forgot her passport and we had to take a taxi all the way back to our house and then to the bus station again!) for the bus even though we had been out late the night before. We arrived in Puerto Viejo around 10:30 am and called Ahki, the manager of the property we were renting, to ask him how to get to the house from the bus terminal (one of the many downsides of places in Costa Rica not having addresses). We had been in touch with Sylvia, a real estate agent, when renting the house, and she had told us that we could show up whenever we wanted on Saturday, but when we talked to Ahki he said that check-in wasn't until after 12:30 pm. We were disappointed because we had our big backpacks and didn't want to bring them to the beach or wander around the town much trying to find the house (which was supposed to be a few km away), so we decided to go to a restaurant with wifi to kill time until we could leave our things at the house. We bought plates of fruit since we had gotten up too early for breakfast at our homestays and checked email for the first time in a while since internet at CRLA wasn't working well at the end of our time there. 

Eventually we called a cab which we quickly discovered was a little sketchy for two reasons. First, it was an unregistered taxi. We got the number from Ahki, but apparently there is only one real taxi in the entire Puerto Viejo region, and the rest of them are just people who drive people around in their cars regularly. There are no meters and you agree on a price when you get in and tell them where you're going. In San Jose, unregistered taxis are really dangerous, but apparently in Puerto Viejo they're pretty normal. So, we got in and headed to our house. Second, our taxi was a regular sedan, and the house we were renting was at the top of a steep hill with a gravel driveway. Our car couldn't make it even 1/4 of the way up, and we started to slide backward down the hill! Our driver was trying really hard to make it, but eventually we just told him we would walk the rest of the way up, which took about 15 minutes with our heavy backpacks. The Caribbean side of Costa Rica is hotter than the Pacific side, and we were already quite sweaty and a little disgruntled by the time we got up to our house, given the morning's mishaps.

However, when we got to the house we quickly realized that our wait was well worth it. The house was beautiful! It is two stories with a large open living room and kitchen upstairs, and decks on both floors with views of the Caribbean just across the street below. 

The living room. All of the glass sections are sliding windows that open completely, making the upstairs totally open-air if when we wanted it to be.

Downstairs there was a large master bedroom with a closet and a separate bathroom, which Tessa and I claimed for ourselves since we were the first ones to arrive in the house. There were two more bedrooms upstairs, each of which slept 3-4 people, and the rest slept on beds in the extra room downstairs. 

Our lovely bedroom! Sleeping on a REAL mattress for the first time this semester was an unbelievable treat... not to mention the view of the sunrise every morning!

One of the real highlights of the house was the kitchen. There was tons of counter space with bar stools and a speakers, making plenty of room for people to cook and eat food together or just hang out in the kitchen area. The windows on the deck also opened up completely, making another bar area with stools out on the deck facing in. Outside we had a beautiful view, and comfortable rocking chairs and a hammock to observe it from.

Tessa in the kitchen. Although it's backlit and impossible to see, there's a view of the sea out the window!

Our upstairs deck! Again, the sea is off in the distance although the lighting is bad here.

This hammock was a hot commodity in a house of twelve!

This sloth lived in a tree right outside of our balcony! We saw him almost every day.

Since it had taken us so much longer to get to the house than we expected, we decided to just wait the extra hour until the next group of people arrived at 2 pm. While we were waiting, Ahki came down, introduced himself to us, and told us a little bit about the property. It turns out that the house is usually used to hold volunteers, because the rest of the property is an organic permaculture cacao farm! The whole property, known as Global Creek, is owned by someone else who lives in the U.S., but Ahki has lived there for the past four years in a different building a two-minute walk up the hill, taking care of guests and volunteers and running the farm. I was very interested to learn more about the property, but he said he would come back later after everyone else arrived to give us more of an orientation. 

As soon as our other ten housemates got in at 2 and we all changed into our bathing suits and applied sunscreen, we headed out to the beach. Our house was actually in Cocles, which is one beach farther south of Puerto Viejo. This turned out to be a good thing, since Puerto Viejo is a little dirtier and more crowded since it draws more tourists and has more restaurants and hotels. The entrance to the beach was just across the street from our house, which was lovely. 

The entrance to the beach near our house

Cocles is (according to my guide book) one of the only beaches in the Puerto Viejo area that has an organized lifeguard system, which turned out to be a good thing because it's a popular surfing beach with strong rip currents. The swimming zone was another couple of minutes down the beach, and we all got in the water within a few minutes of arriving since the early-afternoon sun was really hot.

On the way to swim!

The current was even stronger than we thought, and after a few minutes in the water most of us were too tired to swim anymore so we came out and dried off. For the rest of the week we realized that the best way to cool off is lying down in the shallow water where there's no rip tide. The beach was beautiful and not crowded at all, and we enjoyed it safely every day for the extent of our stay in Cocles.

Manny found a crab in the road on the first night!

The second day of break, the rest of our amigos on the way to Bocas del Toro were staying in a hostel in Puerto Viejo to break up their travel time into more manageable increments. They came over to see our house during the day (it was a big hit, not surprisingly) and we all went to the beach together. That night, a few of us went out for "girly cocktails" happy hour in town, which was a nice break from being in a very large group all day.

Lee, Liz, Rukhshna, Tessa, and I at happy hour

We all tried guaro sours, which are made with Costa Rican liquor made from sugarcane. They were a big hit, and Liz, who has a bar tending license, made them for us again later in the week. Our waitress also brought us free bruschetta to snack on since we stayed there for a long time!

The "sunset" view during happy hour, which isn't much of a sunset because we were facing east.

Monday we had a lazy day around the house and met with the real estate agent to make the second half of our payment for the house. After that we bummed around on the beach all afternoon, which was nice because it wasn't as hot as it had been the past two days.  At night we had a friendship bracelet-making frenzy with a bunch of string that Carolyn had bought in San Jose. We all taught each other how to do different stitches, and made bracelets for everyone in the house. It was a relaxing way to spend a night since we had gone out four nights in a row before that. We also all cooked in the house, which was really nice since we haven't been able to make our own food all semester. I made pasta with spinach, onions, tomatoes, parmesan cheese, garlic, and olive oil. It was amazing! Costa Rican food is delicious, but it was nice to switch it up.

Everyone intently working on their bracelets in the living room

Tuesday we got up early because we wanted to rent bikes to go to another beach 10 km away. Unfortunately, as soon as we got ready to leave the house it started pouring! It was still warm out so we could have biked anyway, but we decided that since the point was to go to the beach we would rather wait for a sunnier day. Thus my morning became dedicated to reading and taking a nap in our hammock, overlooking the sea (I can't complain!). In the afternoon it stopped raining so Tessa and I walked into Puerto Viejo to look for souvenirs for our friends and family, since our next couple of sites were going to be pretty isolated and we weren't sure when we'd be able to shop again. I did really well and got things for my friends from high school and Erin. Tessa also got herself a ring and something for her mom. We even squeezed in a little time at the beach when we got back, and started teaching Rukhshana to float in a shallow pool of water that had no rip current. She is an amazingly quick learner!

Tessa on the way back to our house after Rukhshana's swimming lessons

Walking back to our house at dusk, we saw that even though all of our other friends had already gone back to make dinner, Justin was still out in the water. He rented a surf board from some guy on the beach and was teaching himself how to surf! Surprisingly he made a lot of progress in just a few hours, and was able to get up onto his knees consistently and ride into shore. We stopped and Tessa gave him a few pointers, because she's taken surf lessons before, and then went home because it was getting dark and we didn't have a light.

Justin surfing at sunset

Wednesday we made good on our plans of the day before and got up early to rent bikes and go to Manzanillo. Nine out of twelve of us decided to go, and by 10:00 we were on the road. We started out going slowly because a bunch of the group hadn't ridden bikes in years, and because we were enjoying touring the neighborhood south of our house. Even at our slow pace, it only took us ten minutes to get to a grocery store that it took us almost 40 minutes to get to on foot the day before. It became really clear why so many people rode bikes there, since it's so much faster than walking and the low coastal roads are almost completely flat.

Biking! Photo by Ellen

About half way to Manzanillo we had a little detour and ended up going to Punta Uva first. We locked up our bikes on palm trees and set up on the beach, which we shared with approximately four other people. The whole area is much nicer on weekdays, because there are less tourists around and the beaches are practically private. The beach we were at in Punta Uva was a beautiful cove protected by a coral reef offshore, which we happily discovered as soon as we went into the water and felt how calm it was in comparison to Cocles. Floating on my back for 20 minutes, I barely moved an inch... there was absolutely no rip tide! We were overjoyed.

The cove... so calm and peaceful!

Amigas in Punta Uva

We spent several hours enjoying the tranquil water and napping and reading on the beach. We took an ice cream break around lunch time at a store across the street from the beach, and then decided to continue on the last 5 km to Manzanillo since it had been our original destination, and was the beach that Ahki had recommended that we visit. He also told us that it was the best Caribbean food in the region, so we stopped at a small restaurant and some people got early dinners. I wasn't hungry because I had packed lunch, but I got to try a little bit of the rice and beans, which they make with coconut milk on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It was a subtle difference in taste, but it was good! Manzanillo was an even quieter town than Punta Uva; in the words of Ahki, it exemplifies "pure Costa Rican tranquilidad." I can see why he thinks so, but overall I thought that Punta Uva was the most beautiful beach we had seen yet, and I was really glad that we had unexpectedly decided to stop there on the way.


Thursday was Ellen's birthday and our last day in the house we rented, so of course we went out Wednesday night to celebrate. Apparently since the most tourists are around on the weekends, businesses in Puerto Viejo takes Wednesdays off instead. We didn't know this in advance, but it became increasingly apparent as we walked into town and saw every restaurant and bar closed. As we got closer, though, we started to hear dance music in the distance, and followed our ears to the one bar that was open. It was practically empty (I think there were actually a total of six people there besides us), but, as usual, we filled the place up with just our group. One of the lessons that I've learned this semester is that traveling with eleven to 27 friends at all times makes it easy to have a party whenever and wherever you want. Haha. Because the bar was so empty, the DJ took every song request that we made, and Ellen got lots of free things for her birthday. We had a really fun night and Ellen definitely started off her 21st year well, surrounded by friends in a bar on the beach in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

All of us on the beach outside the bar on Ellen's birthday

Thursday we woke up early and cleaned the house, since we had to check out by 10:00. We had tried to rent the house the whole week, but someone had reserved it before us and were arriving on Thursday so we couldn't. However, after befriending Ahki and learning about the cacao farm on the property (more on that later), he offered us extra nights of free lodging if we volunteered 3-4 hours each day that we stayed. We thought that the offer was too good to pass up, and paid our way for another night in Puerto Viejo... some people helped pick cacao, some people helped make compost piles, and a few other people and I cleaned up the house thoroughly so that they could save money and not call in a cleaning service before the next guests arrived. After we finished working, I interviewed Ahki for a homework assignment we had about getting local perspectives on conservation issues in Costa Rica (more on that later, too), and then we went out to dinner to celebrate Ellen's birthday again. We had a much more low-key night and went to a restaurant instead of a bar, and we all got delicious food. The waitress even brought Ellen free cake! Manny's sister also arrived in Costa Rica that day with her boyfriend, and somehow she found us in the restaurant we were in without knowing we'd be there. Puerto Viejo is a small town in a small country! Haha. Still tired from the fiesta the night before and our volunteering earlier that day, we went to sleep relatively early to get ready for the next leg of our spring break trip.

Ellen's birthday cake!