Pura Vida - Costa Rica

A "Tico" (feminin: tica) is an idiomatic term usually used for people native to Costa Rica. Sometimes the use is extended on to all latin american countries. In a globalized world we see the whole of humanity as one - more or less. We often assume, that the person across from us thinks the same way we do. They have problems with the same issues, we have. They are dependend on the same things, we are. They appreciate the same things, we do. Realizing, that in fact, those things may very well not be true, for me, is a very important step in our maturing process. It helps us understand the reasoning behind the actions of the person sitting across from us. It helps us understand the needs or the borders. The actions or reactions. I grew up in a small village of about 1500 citizens in the southwest of  Germany. In June 2021 I set sails to Costa Rica. Me never having been out of Europe for all of my 21 years of age, did definitly not prepare me for this experience. But extactly thi...

   The journey continues... (Read the previous part  here ) It was 15:55, the moment I saw Costa Rican soil the for the first time. Even tough it was from 12000 metres above said soil... Costa Rica The first thing I noticed was the structure of the land . Whenever you lift off with a plane in europe, you see the easy recognizable pattern of agricultural-used plots , whereas Costa Rica seemed to only have a minimal amount of those. It looked wilder, untamed . And a lot of green . About half an hour we started the descent and more details revealed themselves. I must admit, that those details shocked me a little bit. Many, many small huts with rusty metal sheets as roofs.  - Where did I land here? - From a normal european neighborhood to this? - But soon the plane got to close to the ground to see more of it. 16:42, that was what the clock was showing the moment the plane stopped. Germany Before driving off to Costa Rica, all I was hearing were things like: "Costa Rica...

  The journey continues... (Read the previous part here ) After all the bureaucracy was done, it was time for the personal belongings to be processed. In this post, I want to lay out our experiences spending the first few month in Costa Rica. This might be useful for you, if you are on the verge of emigrating to a country in Latin-america. The challenges were, that in Costa Rica, getting a hold of some things can be really challenging . So here is a list of things you  might need to bring: Good quality items Migrating from Germany, we realised that there is a big difference in the quality of american products to european brands. Even the ones imported from the US lack durability and practicability. I, for example, brought some tools, baking pans for bread and high-quality kitchen knives. Rye flour It is really hard to find rye flour. In fact. as of now, beeing in Costa Rica for ten weeks we have not found it anywhere. This is because the country does not cultivate any cereal...

Since we are in our infancy of beeing self-sufficient, we feed ourselfs with kinda basic foodstuff. Which in itself is not the worst thing to happen. I mean at least we are not hungry but our longterm goal deffinitly is being able to diversify our eating habbits . Because we are living in Costa Rica in a area, which could not get any more rural it is not only healthier, better for the enviroment and cheaper, but also necessary to produce a variety of products our own. The reason for that is, that the country does not produce many products themselves and because they are not a rich country by any means, they are also not able to import much. the result beeing, that there are not much of a selection in the local shops. So toady we harvested all the basil we had growing in the greenhouse.. Make shure to not only harvest the leaves put also the stalks. That way, the plant can better redevelop itself. We planted a lot of it in between the other plants because we read, that it is supposed t...

Todays topic will be how I planted sugarcane . Another really easy-to-cultivate plant with a great variety of usages. A few weeks ago, we tried growing fodder beet but we did not have any success with those. They did not even germinate. I figuered the best way the reuse it was by planting sugarcane. It truly is an amazing plant ! The most common use probably is making sugar , which we definitly look forward to doing. But it also has other uses. We will use it secondary for feeding animals . They will absolutely love it. Also it is a nice snack in between while working. You can just jew on a bit of a stalk and it will taste sweet. It has other benefits, like making paper , which we probably will not use. But if you are interested, I advice you to do your research on sugarcane. It is a great ecological plant . Sugarcane likes loads and loads of water , but also a good drainage for best yields. But my neighbor, who has some experience in growing sugarcane, told me, that it is really easy...

Next after the bananas were the pinapples . When I arrived the others already had planted some. This is done by twisting of the green top of a pineapple fruit and just planting it in the soil. Currently me and my girlfriend live alone on the finca, which unfortenatle led to some works not beeing done in time. Same with the pineapples. They were totally overgrown. Also, it did not like the way they were planted. They were really close together and close to the bananas. Almost in the shadows of the palms. base situation My goal was to stretch them out, making it easier for them to get their nutrition and put them more in the direct sunlight, they like. First I started preparing the soil. This will be a pattern, which will repeat itself. The soil on the property is really acidic. I really need to do a test to know for shure, but my guess is around four to five on the pH-scale. We mix the soil with charcoal . This raises the pH and secondly puts carbon in it. Effects, that we welcome, si...

In the last post I described the base situation that we are in. So today contributed my first bigger addition to the finca. I expanded the already existing banana plantages with a new kind . They were a gift from our neighbors, who are cultivating a lot of fruits. This variety is characterized by a really sweet taste within a really tiny fruit . They grow exactly like all other varieties, which is as follows: Banana plants create babies at the very bottom of the "trunk" , that will become their own palm shortly. It is not very hard cutting those babies of and relocating them, so that is exactly what we did. We got gifted six plants. Tip:  Plant or relocate your plants about three days after a full moon. Like raising the oceans creating tides the moon also affects the fluids within a plant, resulting in better growth and making it easier for the migrated plants to get build up a sufficient water supply. First I mowed the lawn and kept the cut grass on the side and dug holes ...

This is going to be the start of a series on how we are trying to build up self-sufficient-farming in Costa Rica. In this part I want to lay out the situation I was met with, when I came to our finca. Greenhouse We have a greenhouse, which is about 8x12m big. It has a closed roof but a dense net on all four sides adapted to the climate, because the main purposes of the greenhouse are to block out the heavy rains of the rainy-season and to keep out intruders in lizards. They especially like the inner heart of young plants, killing it in the process. With temperatures of 20°C to 30°C there is no need to use a greenhouse for higher temperatures. In the greenhouse there was one half  set up with a variety of vegetables with a perma-culture setup . Bananas There was forest of Bananas already existing. Some sort of Banana, the locals call "quadrados" , which are used for cooking similar to potatoes, that are nearly not sweet at all. Most of them were big already and we harvested ...

My flight to Costa Rica in June of 2021 was the first long-haul flight I have ever made. All the more important to make a good plan. I had a really difficult time planning the trip and found it hard to get all the information I needed. So I will try to give a simple overview over what has to be fought of when going to Costa Rica. Also, everthing was under the special condition of covid-protocols. 1 - The flight First step for us was to look up a flight. I can`t really comment on this issue, because you may come from a different place than me. In generell there are multiple companies flying to Costa Rica regularly. For example Airfrance, Lufthansa, KLM, Edelweiss Air or Iberia. We travelled with AIRFRANCE , and were really satisfied. Direct flights go from PARIS . LUFTHANSA flies from FRANKFURT direct, KLM is something for the dutchman from AMSTERDAM , EDELWEISS AIR from ZÜRICH and IBERIA lets you travel from MADRID . As of the date of this post, the cheapest option is around 220€ (...

 Welcome back, visitor :) This will be the first real post on this blog in the form of a series I really creativly called "THE TRAVEL" I want to detail step by step how the heck we ended up in the jungle on the other side of the world, starting in Germany. A big step down, right? At least that is, what most people we talk to about our plans thought.              "What if you get sick?"          or             "How do we even stay in touch, when you don`t have internet?"          or             "Don`t go out at night!" For us, this country definitly is no step down by any means. To answer these typical questions: We have medical support here aswell. The idea, that you just die, or something, when you get sick once you leave the EU is kinda stupborn. In most places health care is even better than in Germany. The...