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Published: January 25th 2009
Main house.
Cob oven and main house dining room, kitchen and living room at far end. The world of fancy cars, high-rises, and advertising isn't so different from San Jose, Costa Rica, where it seems most of the US ex-pats end up satiating their "exotic" appetites, but there are some major differences that leave me feeling a little of balance. More than a little...in fact, walking around a natural food store today (which I had considered to be the one place I most missed), I was shell-shocked by all the options, none of which carried any smells characteristic of outdoor markets, which let you know that the food you are about to buy is actually edible, and not made out of plastic.
So what has happened in the last five months of my life? It's hard to explain completely, since the majority of my experiences have been controlled by some external wind, which I just sort of gave in to and allowed myself to float with. I'll attack it in installments, since to try and fit five months in one entry would lead to an overwhelmingly long, emotionally devoid account. So, let's all pretend I'm still in Central America, living a latino-gypsy lifestyle, riding buses, cooking on the one working burning in cheap hostel kitchens
Main House
Looking out from the "living room" (called "the pit"). Down the path is the road and across the road the other part of the ranch with bunk house, hooch, classroom, and woodshop area. Rain, rain, rain. using the only vegetables in season, speaking spanish every day, making new friends with other gypsies just passing through...a fantasy I won't resist...
I received word from the owners of Rancho Mastatal while I was still in Honduras, telling me that I would be welcome on their Ranch starting on the fifth of September. As much as I had wanted to see Nicaragua in detail, I was starting to feel a little burnt out from the inconsistencies of traveling and saying hello and goodbye to people every day. So I cruised through the rest of Honduras as fast as the buses would take me, and stayed in the two most visited cities in Nicaragua, only a couple days in Each. My last morning in Granada, I walked over to the terminal next to the market to see when the next bus was leaving for the border. I had a half hour, so I rushed back to my hostel, packed my bag, and took a taxi back to the market. Walking into the parking lot, the usual throng of bus attendees directed me to the right bus, and I asked when it was leaving, just to make sure the 9:30
Hooch
My private tree house for six weeks until people started arriving to share it. hadn't left. "Ahorita!" was the response I got, which generally means somewhere in between right now, I don't know, or never. That particular day I took it to mean in about five minutes, and I optimistically borded...and then waited until 11:15 when we actually left. I traveled the whole day and stayed in a city outside of San Jose, as nervous as other people's stories had made me about the big capital. My first night in Costa Rica, I was shocked by the modernity of the city, the wealth of the people, and the eleven dollar price tag on the dorm room I found in Alajuela.
The next day, following the directions on the website, I made my way to Mastatal. Bus to San Jose, walk to another terminal, asking people in the street the whole way, bus to Puriscal, from which leaves one bus every day to Zapaton, passing Mastatal en route. Almost immediately after leaving San Jose began the vibrant greenery that would in time lead me to appreciate Costa Rica for more than its extremely gringo-fied aspect. The rain started around midday and accompanied us from San Jose to Puriscal, and from Puriscal on the more
Hanky.
Bottom floor of the Hanky at night. typical central american bus, down the poorer, rutted, washed out dirt road, around the narrow turns overlooking treacherous precipices, two and a half hours to Mastatal.
I have to admit that all of my expectations were completely exceeded by the area surrounding Mastatal. I had pictured a farm/ranch in the middle of a dry village with white concrete roads, flat in the middle of a plain. Approaching through mountains and green jungle, I started to feel more like it was a place I was meant to go. The bus dropped me off in the town square, or, more accurately, where the incoming road hits a tee and continues to the left to Zapaton, or to the right to San Miguel. The bus stop stands in front of the small restaurant, which is across the street from the cantina, which is across the street from the front gate of the Ranch. Down the dirt road about 100 meters is the church, another hundred the soccer field and the school. All perched on a ridge overlooking jungle and cow pasture.
The owner of the ranch met me at the door, naked baby daughter in arm, and showed me around a
Hanky
The ranch dog, Pico de Gallo, sleeping. Definitely not in his own bed. This is the bottom floor of the Hanky. None of the buildings are enclosed. little bit. I decided to sleep in a structure called the Hooch, designed and built after a similar structure invented by our family friend in Puerto Rico. It's a bamboo tree house, sort of, constructed like an upside-down pyramide, with cables attaching to the ground for balance. Once settled in, I didn't leave for the next six weeks.
For a more in depth explanation of the Ranch, they have a website, Rancho Mastatal. My impressions were rather good ones. I arrived at the beginning of the rainy season, when the owners, Timo and Robin, were preparing to take their yearly two-month trip to the US to see family and load up on supplies that they can't find in Costa Rica. Most of the other interns that were staying the "winter" had already arrived, including some part time volunteers that ended up staying longer and becoming interns, and some interns from the last session that were staying to finish a project they had been working on for the last few months. The ranch itself started about seven years ago on a piece of property with two small structures already in place. Since then, the couple has welcomed thousands of volunteers
Hanky.
Bottom floor of the Hanky at night. and guests, including groups from Universities and other courses that span anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks. Using knowledge gained mostly from books and passer-throughs, the couple has transformed the land into a small community consisting of a main house, with kitchen, office, library, living room, dining hall, and several bedrooms, a bunkhouse-dormitory, a volunteer house, a Hooch, a woodshop, a classroom, their own small house, four composting toilets, and several other small private cabins in progress. There is a man named Tom, nicknamed Tiburon for an unfortunate shark encounter when he was 25, who has built a house above the soccer fields, and a Dutch man who owns a lot of property in the area and hired Timo and team to build a home up the road. All the structures employ sustainable techniques, using earth, bamboo, and wood, which is milled from trees downed in the forest (an intense process for the first couple years before they had a complete woodshop). They take such care with every structure, each is so beautiful and unique, as well as every piece of furniture. They plan to get started with agriculture once all the building is done, on the
Bambano
The front of the new shower built by the Hooch and Hanky for volunteers to use. move to being completely self-sufficient.
So, the owners left and the rain set in. I had come expecting to learn so much, and for the first few weeks I spent a decent amount of time working on the earthen walls of the new shower, helping to mix lime plaster and later painting with lime wash. But, as rain dominated most of our days, we found ourselves more often inside, reading and whatnot. There were storms of every nature, emotional and climatic, and the season was pretty intense. Towards the last part of the first two months, I was in the kitchen most of the time, helping the local woman prepare the meals, as she too was losing motivation. I learned a lot, about cooking and baking. We baked every week in a cob oven, that took most of the morning to heat up. We would make sourdough for the week, and bagels to eat that night. I also went for a lot of walks, down rivers, to waterfalls, all over, and found myself recharging gradually, as the energy of the jungle and the power of the rainy season replaced all that had slipped out of me over years of
Hall Crawl
Another party we had during the rainy season (we had to do something to keep us from going crazy). This one entailed a different theme and drink at each of four building on the ranch. Here Ryan and Red are in the Hanky, the volunteer house designed and built by a man with a surname of Hanky. college stress. Running around barefoot in the jungle, I was reminded of my childhood and felt so alive at times I could barely contain it. By the time two months had run through, however, I was feeling quite a bit of cabin fever, a mixture of the rain and mini-dramas that had played out throughout the winter. More than anything, however, I was feeling the desire to travel again. Therefore, when my friend and fellow-intern Ryan decided to fly home out of Managua, Nicaragua, I jumped on board to travel back to Nicaragua with him.
When I first arrived at the Ranch, I caught wind of a solar energy course that would be starting on the first of January, and that the instructor usually asks for a translator. I contacted him within the first week of my stay, sure that I would never want to leave the Ranch, and made a commitment to translate the class, in exchange for free tuition. For this reason, I had a commitment to return to the ranch. That and my mother was planning to come visit on the tenth of December. So, even though I left the Ranch a little burnt out and
Hall Crawl
In the unfinished bodega (tool shed), Scott from England and Bierget from Germany sponsored a Scottish dancing session. wishing I could go out traveling forever, I planned to explore Nicaragua only for a couple weeks and be back in time for Thanksgiving, and to farewell the other interns that were leaving around the beginning of December. With that schedule in mind, I set off November 10th to the beach. Silly me, thinking my world fits into some kind of schedule😊...
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anonymous
non-member comment
Thanks for being so diligent about updating your blog. Every time I read it it makes me want to jump on a plane and go somewhere!