There is something to be said about waking up in the morning to the sound of howler monkeys, lizards and waves lapping on the beach. That was the joyous way I woke up on Sunday morning at punta mona, an off the grid, permaculture focused organic farm/botanical garden.
On Friday, we stopped at a banana farm on the way out to manzanillo for the night. There, we were introduced to how the strange tendencies of people in the USA and Europe dictate whether or not a perfectly tasty banana is 'good'. For it to be so, there must be no bruising, which is really hard to make happen. Needless to say, over 25% of bananas end up being thrown out just because htey have too many scars for Western tastes. Luckily, a company that makes baby food bought the bananas and now they are used as a base puree rather than being thrown away.
This is how bananas are protected from bugs and sunlight:
Friday night we spent the night in Manzanillo. The next morning after breakfast, a few of us impromptu jumped in the water while still wearing most of our clothes instead of swim suits. Always an interesting decision when one is hiking for what was anticipated to be a couple of hours.
About 20 minutes later, we hopped out of the BEAUTIFUL Caribbean and put our packs back on, met up with Tino, our local guide and hiked out to Punta Mona. We saw these wonderful things:
Cocoa bean (where chocolate comes from!)
Yellow Eyelash Viper - ridiculous. We also saw two gray ones.
Spot the sloth.
Almonds on a Almendra de la Playa (beach almond tree)
Howler Monkies!
A scary spider. This is why you don't grab a tree if you're falling.
Nests of the Montezuma Oropendola
Spines on a Palm Tree - another reason why you don't grab a tree when you fall down.
A pretty white flower.
Cocoa beans! Shelling them and getting ready to make chocolate.
Cocoa shells
Toasted cocoanut mixed with soy sauce that we had on our Ron Don for dinner.
ground chocolate credit to Joshué
best.
They had a couple types of tea.
Hibiscus flower - we had these outside of our church in Lima
Coral could be found all along the trails and gardens at Punta Mona
Outside of our rooms at Punta Mona
epiphytes - plants that grow on trees
PAVO - it's thanksgiving today. I'm excited for lunch :)
these things look like what i would imagine dragons to look like
On Friday, we stopped at a banana farm on the way out to manzanillo for the night. There, we were introduced to how the strange tendencies of people in the USA and Europe dictate whether or not a perfectly tasty banana is 'good'. For it to be so, there must be no bruising, which is really hard to make happen. Needless to say, over 25% of bananas end up being thrown out just because htey have too many scars for Western tastes. Luckily, a company that makes baby food bought the bananas and now they are used as a base puree rather than being thrown away.
This is how bananas are protected from bugs and sunlight:
About 20 minutes later, we hopped out of the BEAUTIFUL Caribbean and put our packs back on, met up with Tino, our local guide and hiked out to Punta Mona. We saw these wonderful things:
Fresh Coconut: Tino cut the shells off with his machete
papaya trees outside of our Manzanillo hostel
starfruit trees
backpacking to Punta Mona
The Golden Orb spider: not poisonous, I promise
At a viewpoint on the hike out
The inside of a strangler fig - it grows from the ground up around another tree and strangles the life out of the tree it grows up.
A walking palm - they can actually change their location
Forest godesses. Don't really know why, but I ran with it :)
Once we got to Punta Mona, we started learning about permaculture and what it is to live sustainably off the land.
Later on Sunday we stopped at a reserve for the BriBri indigenous people. They have an iguana conservation project in hopes of increasing the population of iguanas so that they will survive and can be used once again for traditional purposes.
gourd tree - used in traditional art and traditionally used as containers
Interesting things I have experienced: compost toilets, magic berries and then eating star fruit and having them not be bitter, eating almonds on the beach, getting intense amounts of bug bites, moving away from being self-conscious and hiking in the rain without caring about how I feel - just enjoying the experience and not finding things to complain about, enjoying the thickness of vegetation, the beach, realizing that I would feel very comfortable living in a beach town. That's it for now :)
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