Costa Rica 2023

                                                       Cape, Eli, Sofi, Jules, and Lily cutting up Papaya                                                                                                                         Nuria and Isa grinding up Squash and Beets                                                                     Jules scooping the seeds from her Papaya                                                        Our guide, Ambra, teaching us about fermentation                             Some of our students with our guide, Sam, teaching us about some uses of soil                                                                                                 Sofi holding manure                                         Our guide, Sam, showing us different plants and their use in permaculture                                                     Sam, giving us our permaculture lesson before we explore                                                                         

  Eli & Nate about to jump into the waterfall.  Lily looking at the books in Rancho Mastatals library. Tim the owner/Founder of Rancho Mastalatal.  Everyone getting a tour of Rancho Mastatal. Cape, Nuria, & Ariela reading in the meeting space. Gala, Liliy, Jules, Ariela, & Sofi listening to Mama Mia!  Playing soccer with some of the locals at Mastatal. Ms. Novak, Cape & Ariela enjoying the garden. Sofi & Jules doing some shopping. 

       After another early start at 5:45, both the boys and girls had a quick breakfast snack at the airbnb, piled into the bus, and hit the road. Today's bus ride was filled with the normal antics of the bus such as card games, music and enjoying the sights. The bus ride took us away from the pacific coast at Ojochal to more inland in the Cordillera Volcanic Central mountain range of Costa Rica. I enjoyed seeing the scenery change from flatlands to steep mountains with sheer cliffs on either sides of the road. Unfortunately, we had the unforeseen trouble of the bus ride being about one more hour than expected to arrive to the ranch.     But, eventually we arrived just in time for brunch.     Brunch today was rice, beans, eggs, and fresh fruit that was all grown on the farm, or locally sourced. We then met Tim who was the owner of the ranch that gave us the lay of the land and told us about the story of the ranch and his story. The ranch served as a sustainability education center

     Throughout the day we had different activities that helped us to develop different skills for working and learning from the earth, and therefore we created objects that can be used for architecture and personal use like soap.  We started the day by waking up and going to a class where then we were introduced to new members of Rancho Mastatal, where they showed and asked us about the knowledge that we had when regarding natural elements for creating buildings. Once we had our small conversation, we proceeded to work with clay, sand, and straw among other elements that are found in the soil for creating adobe breaks. We mixed and used a shovel to retreat the materials needed. We were separated into two groups where we changed the activities throughout the day when regarding this class.      Once we finished with the class, we then moved to how to create a natural soap with our hands from natural and original materials found in the place.  The class consisted of a small introduction

  Sebastian our guide for our snorkeling trip telling us about the different birds that live on the island. Group photo in front of our beautiful dinner view.  Sofi, Nate and, Leon enjoying the music on the boat ride to Caño Island. Sofi and Ariela posing in front of our dinner sunset. Cape and Veronica enjoying the boat ride. Nate and Leon looking onto the sunset. dinner. Niko enjoying our snorkeling trip. Group photo at the beach.

  Today, our day went similarly to Friday. The girls woke up at a bright and early 5:45, prepared all of our snorkeling and boat needs, ate a quick breakfast of granola bars and bananas, and got in the bus. Ten minutes later, we arrived at Innoceana, where we waited for the boys to finish packing up their suitcases, as for the last night they were gonna be staying with us at the Airbnb. Once the boys arrived and everyone had refilled their water bottles and bought their Innoceana souvenirs, we loaded everyone onto the bus and made our way to the town of Sierpe once again. Once there, we put on sunscreen and bathing suits in the Las Vegas cafe before loading all our belongings and ourselves into the Mokarran, our boat which we had previously used for our mangrove tour ad snorkeling on Friday. Today, we had two new guides, Sebastian and Karina, who were very informative and told us everything we needed to know about the area and the wildlife living there.  Our first stop after getting th