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Personalized life-changing travel guidance
You are almost ready for your journey! The entire NuMundo team is excited to hear your stories as you embark on a new adventure. Refer to this guide for some tips on where to begin!
Central America is filled with centers to learn and play with likeminded individuals. It’s a great region that is small enough for travel, accessible prices, and lots of international travelers.
Costa Rica
Costa Rica is a great place to start your journey. It is safe, has beautiful nature & wildlife, and is very traveler & backpacker-friendly. You will find people who speak English without a problem and then you can ease into Spanish! While traveling in the country, I recommend taking busses to the regions you want to visit – they are reliable. There are also very cheap flights from the Osa Peninsula (Puerto Jimenez) back to San José if that’s how you want to travel. A nice hub is the San Isidro area (close to the beach, mountains, lots of impact centers & farmers markets).
Finca Morpho – I highly recommend doing a month-long work-trade experience (or more) at Finc Morpho, Southern part of Costa Rica on the Osa Peninsula near the town of Puerto Jimenez. The entire NuMundo team stayed at this jungle-beach impact center for a whole month. It is a beautiful intentional community & permaculture project lead by a couple young families passionate about growing their own food, composting, recycling, experimenting with superfoods, natural building, living in community, maintaining a healthy lifestyle and having fun on the beach. You have direct beach access, trails with primary forest, close access to the Corcovado National Park – one of the most biodiverse spots in the world – and I can guarantee you will see a monkey and give yourself a natural blue clay body scrub! You could also learn how to surf there.
Their mission is to spread the seed of permaculture using love, compassion and understanding for everyone and everything. And to tend the seedling as the idea of permaculture flowers into a beautiful new world by openly sharing all knowledge and skills.
Finca Morpho’s vision and values are to: Strive to achieve self-sufficiency and sustainability. Strive to Understand, Love, and Cherish all life. Understand and use the Co-Founders agreements. Share all information freely and openly.
Their farm goals are to produce as much food and abundance as possible through the guide of the Basic Permaculture Agreements and to educate and empower the people to take back the tools needed to create an abundant and fulfilling life for themselves.
They currently have lots of stays and work-trades listed on NuMundo, contact them for more opportunities, some may not be listed. When you write them, ask for Ticon.
Finca Morpho also has land right next to primary rainforest about an hour inland – this spot called Finca La Paz. They are organizing a Rustic Permaculture Immersion there end of February. Touch base with them on further details!
Contact & Book – Website – Facebook
If you want to get more serious about learning natural building or earthen building you should check out Rancho Mastatal’s formal education programs such as timber frame construction or earthen walls, plasters, finishes and artistry. Their center has gorgeous and unique structures built with bamboo and other local materials. One of the best centers for natural building and permaculture! There are various workshops being offered on NuMundo, as well as their bamboo structure. I would recommend contacting the center for work-trade opportunities. Some more info on Rancho Mastatal:
Rancho Mastatal is an education center and community rooted in environmental sustainability, meaningful, place-based livelihoods and healthy caring relationships. They provide powerful educational opportunities through our inspirational, experiential programs and onsite network of integrated, working systems.
Their practices are appropriate to rural, tropical, environment; are replicable; and embody competencies and philosophical tenants which are also applicable in other regions of the world. Their programs reach a cross-generational, cross-cultural audience and are accessible to a range of demographics.
Rancho Mastatal takes into consideration environmental concerns from a personal to a global perspective and develops models, techniques, and solutions that are regenerative, regionally appropriate, and maintainable. They are committed to sourcing our food and building materials locally while maximizing the utility of our diversified farm. They promote community resiliency by supporting regional efforts to assure clean water, healthy food, fertile agricultural land, and safe, naturally constructed buildings.
Contact & Book – Website – Facebook – Instagram
VerdEnergia Pacifica – This center has a super fun vibe – there are often many young volunteers and this project has reforested massive pieces of land. Their annual Permaculture Design Certification is an awesome way to upgrade your knowledge on permaculture. They focus on permaculture, reforestation, and natural building. They also grow cacao, so highly recommended for one of the best chocolate experiences!
VerdEnergia Pacifica is an intentional permaculture community and reforestation project in the mountains of Lanas de Puriscal, Costa Rica. They are a cooperative dedicated to ecosystem regeneration and sustainable lifestyle creation, experimenting with practices that serve our land base and withdraw legitimacy from the unsustainable structures and habits of our cultures. They aim to transform today’s convergence of global crises into opportunities to unite, educate, and co-create a more conscious, just, and abundant way of life for themselves and generations to come.
Contact – Website – Facebook – Instagram
If you’re going to be in Costa Rica in February, join NuMundo at VerdEnergia 17-21 February 2017 for a transformational leadership immersion in the Costa Rican jungle. I will be there with the rest of our team leading the event. It’s held at the impact center above I just described. It’s going to be a truly life-changing experience!
Discover your path, align passion with purpose, and take steps toward achieving your life goals. NuSeed is designed to set you on your path towards self-realization, and connect you to real opportunities to personal and professional growth. The seed is the beginning, and needs the right nutrients to nurture a new life.
Included: local organic food, practical workshops, networking, dancing, fun.
Nourish your body, mind and soul with local organic vegetarian food (included), practical educational content, and practices for inner balance. Below is the platter, come taste what the NuMundo network has to offer, and walk through this portal of inspiration and empowerment with us as we offer you the seeds to a new system and new way of life.
Life Design – Receive the tools to cultivate your inner garden. Leading facilitators will give you tools that you can put into practice in your everyday life to make real changes and increase well-being, productivity, and fulfillment. Find the place your passions and skills meet a real need. Each participant will receive personalized 1-on-1 life-coaching mini-sessions to connect you to opportunities to grow.
Entrepreneurship – There has never been so much opportunity and so many resources at our fingertips. Today, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and we can harness the vast knowledge and freely available resources to manifest our visions and bring our dreams to life. Learn practical tools for launching a business or non-profit, and connect to resources, mentors, and networks to take the next steps.
Leadership Development – Step into your potential as a leader, and take the first steps towards empowerment. Building an organization or a movement begins with building oneself.
Hands-on Permaculture – Permaculture is one of the most valuable and potent technologies accessible to humans today. It gives us the tools to plant and water the seeds of the new system. It is grounded in ancient indigenous traditions. It is more than growing food – it is growing and cultivating life. Be immersed in a living, breathing permaculture education center, and learn both hands-on techniques and their conceptual foundations from internationally renowned professional permaculture instructors and local experts.
Bioconstruction – Building with earthen and natural materials is an ancient technology, and is once again on the rise. Experience hands-on techniques that millions of indigenous peoples employ around the world, even today. The executive director of City Repair, the organization behind the revolutionary Village-Building Convergence will be there to share how to build a village even in the heart of the city.
Yoga – Yoga has been in existence for thousands of years, but has never been so popular as it is today. Yoga is a powerful practice that aligns mind, body, and spirit in the cultivation of awareness and presence. When we achieve this state of presence, we can bring it with us into each moment of the day.
Compassionate Communication – Learn heart-centered communication techniques to help you create the impact that you want in relationship. Become more in touch with your present moment experience and start to identify your projections while owning your own experience.
Networking – Make the connections to jumpstart your next move and advance on your path. Facilitated networking sessions will connect participants to exciting opportunities, like-minded community in your region, and revolutionary organizations that are planting the seeds of the next world. We will also offer an instructional session on professional networking.
Indigenous Ancestral Wisdom – learn from wisdom keepers of knowledge that has been passed down for centuries about the properties of native plants for healing, nutrition, and more.
Music from the Tribal Future – An international lineup of sound designers will weave a sonic tapestry rooted in tradition. Grounded in the ancient practice of the trance dance ritual, ecstatic dance ceremony is a technology that has been utilized by our ancestors around the world to dissolve individual ego barriers, resolve interpersonal tensions, and strengthen collective community bonds.
Cacao: Growing & Making Chocolate – We are surrounded by cacao forest, and find ourselves in direct contact with this sacred plant. Why is this plant so revered by ancient and modern-day cultures alike? Meet cacao farmers, taste the cacao fruit, learn about the fermentation process, how to make chocolate, and sit in ceremony with cacao medicine.
Ceremony – Cacao ceremonies have been practices by Mayan and Aztec cultures for centuries, and this medicine is being adopted today by Westerners as we take the first steps away from an industrialized, disconnected, chemical-heavy society on our journey back to source of life. Sweat lodge ceremony is a mental and physical purification technology that was developed by many ancient cultures around the world. Elders will lead us through this sacred tradition back to the heart.
Guatemala
Guatemala is also a great option to spend a few weeks or a few months. It is cheaper than Costa Rica and has a strong cultural history. The geography is also very beautiful and varied so you can jungle, mountains, beach or a mix of those. A nice region to be based in is Lake Atitlán, the mythical lake surrounded by volcanoes and tons of learning centers.
Mystical Yoga Farm – This is a great spot on Lake Atitlán with a focus on yoga, permaculture, meditation and shamanism. They host Yoga Teacher Trainings, retreats, immersions and work-trade is also a great option to spend a few weeks or a few months. Deeply rooted in yogic philosophy, they incorporate the Andean Medicine Wheel and Mayan Cosmology into their practices.
One of the primary principles is that of ahimsa, harmlessness and the preservation of life, which radiates out in sustainable practices both inside and outside the center. As Founder Vedantin Ping Luo often reiterates ‘we do not own this land, we are simply caring for it, and as such it is with honor and love that we approach our relationship with this special piece of earth’.
Whether you’d like to join for a Yoga Teacher Training, Permaculture Design Course, Spiritual Retreat or as a Living Community member, the Mystical Yoga Farm is a place to disconnect from the rush of everyday life and reconnect to Source in the Pathless Path.
Contact & Book – Website – Facebook
Alquimia – Here’s a wildcard for you in Guatemala. They are focused on local indigenous medicinal plants and are located next to a Mayan village they partner with to preserve local medicinal plant knowledge.
Alquimia is a sacred space in the forest where creative arts and healing are combined for self-realization and methamorphosis to occur. They encourage the expression of the inner truth through the physical and the spiritual, the uplifting of the mind as a clear function of a more profound connection with all the parts. They work with sacred plants, rituals and psychomagic reaching a state of being which allows us to comprehend the human experience in all its dimensions.
They are creative with their healing processes, such as their ritual theater psychodrama rituals and including food as medicine. Alquimia has several internships: Mayan Ethnobotany and intro to Herbal Medicine, Shamanism and Master Plants and Healing Arts and Unconventional Therapies.
Cacao Convergence – This is a wonderful event mid-January if you are able to arrive in Guatemala then…a magical immersive experience in the jungle of Alta Verapaz. Mayan culture, cacao culture, and set next to the world-famous cascading waterfalls Semuc Champey, and cacao forests of the Guatemayan heartland. Taste the fruits of paradise.
Eat and drink chocolate to your heart’s desire in its many preparations and forms, learn about the process behind chocolate, from bean to bar. Meet local cacao farmers as you explore the beautiful lush Keq’chi Mayan territory.
Cacao Ceremony
Cacao ceremonies have been practices by Mayan and Aztec cultures for centuries, and this medicine is being adopted today by Westerners as we take the first steps away from an industrialized, disconnected, chemical-heavy society on our journey back to source of life. Sweat lodge ceremony is a mental and physical purification technology that was developed by many ancient cultures around the world. Elders will lead us through this sacred tradition back to the heart.
Growing Cacao
We are surrounded by cacao forest, and find ourselves in direct contact with this sacred plant. Why is this plant so revered by ancient and modern-day cultures alike? Meet cacao farmers, learn about the processes of cultivation and fermentation, taste the fruit, and spend time with the trees in their native endemic habitat.
Making Chocolate
Learn from Guatemala’s premier chocolatiers ow to make chocolate, and sit in ceremony with cacao medicine.
Mayan Medicinal Plant Walk
Learn from local wisdom keepers of knowledge that has been passed down for centuries about the properties of native plants for healing, nutrition, and more.
Ecstatic Dance
An international lineup of sound designers will weave a sonic tapestry rooted in tradition. Grounded in the ancient practice of the trance dance ritual, ecstatic dance ceremony is a technology that has been utilized by our ancestors around the world to dissolve individual ego barriers, resolve interpersonal tensions, and strengthen collective community bonds.
Belize
Sattva Land – Here’s an option in Belize! This center was started by some of the most passionate people I know and Belize is certainly off the beaten path. There is a strong emphasis on yoga, permaculture, natural building & holistic health. They were recently building an outdoor restaurant for serving healthy and organic food. Here’s what they are up to:
At Sattva Land, we are co-creating a sustainable learning space to enhance the sacred connection with Earth, each other and with our own selves. In honor and recognition of the land as the most powerful teacher to be guided by, we observe and read her patterns and cycles so that we may educate, inspire, and reawaken those around us through practicing a holistic lifestyle that weaves devotion, balance, health, and mindfulness.
Through the collective development of Sattva Land, we continually strive to live in a self-sustaining village in harmony with Nature and in alignment with our own individual purposes. As we expand into a harmonious community of like minded individuals, we are dedicating ourselves to actively being part of the rise of global consciousness by sharing what we have to offer with visitors, the local people and the land base.
> Learning Spanish – Do it earlier in the trip rather than later, you will get so much more out of it! For an amazing Spanish school with homestay and cultural immersion, I recommend Hijos del Maiz (Nicaragua). It’s a bit of a trek from San José, Costa Rica, but 1-day bus ride totally worth it, also half the price of Costa Rican Spanish schools. Otherwise, make it a point when you are contacting centers that you want to learn Spanish, there may be classes.
> Backpacking – My favorite down-to-earth and straight forward backpacking list and guide is Travel Independent.
> Meeting People – Use Facebook Groups to find the latest events and meetups in the region you’re traveling in. For example: Spirit Events Sacred Valley for events just outside Cusco in Peru. Use keywords like “events, permaculture, expats, expatriates, healers” etc. Don’t be afraid to talk to other travelers in hostels ; ).
> Travel Insurance – I recommend World Packers for international travel & health coverage on your journey.
It was awesome connecting with you, I am wishing you a beautiful journey!
