Pura vida, we're in Costa Rica!

Well well well, can you believe it! we're finally back after what seems like an eternity.  Where have we been? I hear you ask, what have we been doing all this time? Have we stopped moving? have our greenhearts finally been laid to rest?  Not likely!  You know when you start to put something off and then keep promising yourself to get onto it the next time and then the next time.  Well that has been our blog and so much has happened that it's a shame we haven't been recording it and sharing it with you but well hey thats life, but the good news is WE'RE BACK!

So what have we been up to since or last post - Lots!  So here's a quick rundown of where we've been

• Portugal - Staying at the amazing experiment in community living based on trust and peace, Tamera and then with Pete and Cynthia at their Awakened Life Project
  
• Vitoria, Spain - Staying with Ana's parents
  
• France - 5 Days travelling through froggy land - in the rain
• England - 5 weeks staying with Danny's parents, visiting friends, going to weddings, meeting news friends, visiting projects of interest to us eco-geeks, and general sight seeing - mostly in the rain
• Back through France - Stopping at a small goat farm for a night and Ana's sister's for a few days.  Stop press!  Ana's going to be an auntie to a baby girl due in February! Congrats to parents-to-be Vicky and Laurent and the whole Digon clan, as this will be the first-born of the next generation, wheeee!
• Vitoria Spain - Stayed with Rakel, Ana's good friend
• Soria, Spain - Spent a few days in a small village called Cigudosa with a good friend of Ana's, Edu
• Portugal - 5 weeks with Pete and Cynthia again, helping them to develop their land in the beautiful country side around Benfeita
• COSTA bloomin RICA!!!!!!!

So here you find us on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean hanging out with the monkeys and the toucans.  Sipping cocktails with the setting sun and sheltering from what seems a never-ending rain cloud.  For any of you that have seen the floods etc that Central America is suffering on the news, never fear, we are safe and sound and with good people around us.

We were invited to Costa Rica to give a talk about what it means to be green, which went great, and now we are exploring the rest of this beautiful country and lending a hand where we can.

You might have noticed a great little addition to our blog which is a google map located on the top right hand side.  This tracks our route so far in this tropical country, and also places that we are planning to visit - if the rain ever stops! The google map, clever little gadget, also allows you to see piccies of our adventure, although not many as for a while our camera was unusable so we are concentrating more on the experiences themselves than on photographing them!

Big warm hugs to all those who we've encountered on our journey so far, and to all of you who we wish to see again soon.  Take good care, drop us a line when you can, and may the blog be with you.  Pura Vida!

Day 20 - Tamera experience

After breakfasting at our van, our day in the community begins with a speech held in the common room called the "Aula". It is a beautiful, warm, welcoming wooden construction which holds over 350 people. We are amazed to find out that it is a straw-bale build! It turns out that Sabine Lichtenfels went on a pilgrimage to raise the 40.000 € they needed to build it - and here it is.

What a structure, and what a space!

Nice big solar cooker too!

Since we know this project is mainly run by Germans, we wonder if we will be able to understand much. Ana is particularly impressed to find that a third of the room's seating offers headphones for foreigners, with interpreting into English and Spanish! And they have two proper interpreting cabins at the back of the room! Swoon! I find out later that they built them especially in time for the Summer University.

We are fortunate to be here on Day 7 of the University, just when the theme of the day's speech is... Ecology! Totally up our street, of course - synchronicity in action! Allow me to explain some of what was said - I will not add photos as there are many on their site...

Given by Silke Paulick, the Director of Ecology at Tamera, the speech is entitled "S.O.S. Planet Earth: The Ecological Aspect". Silke talks about Planet Earth as one organism, not separate from others, and how, to experience peace and have capacity to co-create, we need to reconnect with the whole. Humans nowadays are in conflict with ourselves and with nature - reflected in the conflict with nature (animal experiments, pesticides and chemicals, forest fires...). Planet Earth needs a new ecology, and human beings need a new concept of ecology. We need to experience love and compassion when walking over the Earth. From the awareness that we are part of Planet Earth, and that we have a cellular memory that can help us take care of Mother Earth, can rise a new concept of ecology.

Silke goes on to remind us that people who are busy with survival, because they suffer war and hunger, have no space in their lives to work on this. It is those of us who are not struggling to survive who need to be working on it.

She explains that sexual flow must also be allowed, not controlled like the rivers and their healing powers have been (dams, canals). She says that love should be irrespective of gender and should be love for all creatures, and that places where these connections can happen are necessary, to achieve changes of consciousness.

Wondering where this is all going, we are glad to hear her explain next the concrete actions that are taking place in Tamera. It seems that there is a huge focus here on the spiritual and humanist side, but that now those areas are steadily developing they are wanting to concentrate more and more on the ecology of their space.

Tamera is in an area that suffers from the threats of desertification and pollution of water and earth. They wish to "read from the book of nature" and rediscover nature as a huge source of inspiration. Their main action is to build up a water landscape, and under the leadership of expert Sepp Holzer they have embarked on an ambitious plan to build five lakes as retention spaces in which to collect and cleanse rain water - what we can see here today with the lakes is work in progress, but it already looks great.

They also recognise the need for an autonomous food supply for all their members, independent from the big supply system, and have begun work in that direction, creating edible landscapes around the water areas.

Tamera wish to develop a globally applicable model to which interested visitors can come to learn and exchange, and apply the knowledge back home. They wish to help develop a new ecology in touch with new technology. They wish to study and improve the information that water carries out into the world.

They propose cooperation with all beings, and Silke explains that they carried out an experiment with rats: they told the rats they did not want to share their living space, and that each should have their own. They built them a Rat Temple and told them to go there instead. Apparently they do. (It has to be said, we did not investigate this claim...;)

Silke spoke of a spiritual ecology, in which we recognise that Earth, like us, has organs, power lines, meridians, energies... and that we need to rediscover these, to create conditions to fully re-unite and re-connect with this living organism that is Planet Earth.

The speech was reinforced by a song, sung by the community choir, called "We are born from the connection between Heaven and Earth".

After a break, participants go off to work in one of the workgroups that have been created for the week. Danny decides to join the Solar Village group, while Ana goes for the Social Activism group.

Part of the activism group

Don't ask!

(lots of healing going on here)

Another activity was a play put on be the children living at Tamera called "The Dark Shadow"

The usual man with guitar at the bar

... and of course no peace event would be complete without the Buddhists

Dinner time!

Bookshop and cafe

go on, give me a hug!

Day 19 - Arrival in Portugal

At 6am a motorbike roars up to us and revs up repeatedly, pointing its front light to our van... we lay still... and as soon as the night rider leaves, Danny throws in our camping chairs, hops into the front of the van and drives us away! Nice getaway, Dan, 30 seconds flat! We decide to follow our instincts in future...

After driving for a while, we stop for coffee in a small village, before the Portuguese border. Here we see the locals eating huge pieces of toasted local bread (tostas they call them), and we succumb to trying them - especially when we discover that TWO cafés con leche and TWO tostas add up to 2.40 € ! Alright! On leaving, a group of girls on a hen night (or rather, hen day since it's about 1pm!) are singing down the street. Cheap and cheerful, this is la España profunda!

Driving into Portugal through Rosal de la Frontera is seamless, and we are happy to drive along a beautiful country road, with no other cars in sight...

When we stop at a petrol station to fill up our almost-empty tank (we did not fill up before leaving Spain, thinking everything is cheaper in Portugal), we realise why there is no-one else on the road - they can't bloody afford to! Unleaded 95 costs 1,53 € a litre! And Spanish truck drivers are striking over the rising prices in Spain?? Eeeek! So, let this be a warning to all of you - stock up on petrol if you are coming to Portugal!


We stop for the hottest hours of the day at Beja, a very pretty town with a village feel. We are beginning to realise that the Portuguese are big on tiles... on the outside of houses.

We discover that the library offers free internet use, so we get up to date on our emails - thanks so much to all of you who have written! It's really great to feel your support and hear your news.

We are heading towards Odemira, in the Alentejo (which means 'South of the Tejo' river, Tajo in Spanish). Here we aim to visit Tamera, Healing Biotope I. This is a project that sounds very intriguing indeed... It seems there is a community of 200 people living here permanently, with the aim of "creating peace knowledge". At the moment, they are holding a Summer University, entitled "Be the Change - Youth for a Future Without War". When we contacted them, they invited us to come and join in with whatever is going on for a small daily fee.

The Tamera logo:

In the evening we arrive at the quinta (finca) Monte Cerro, where Tamera is located, and head for the guest car park. Some organisers we speak to tell us to make ourselves at home and go mingle. So we wander around, taking in the caravan accommodations, large tents of different shapes and materials, various buildings large and small, all gathered around a lake. Our walk takes us to "Aonda", the evening meeting point/bar, perched on the edge of another smaller lake, where they serve all sorts of organic drinks. We get an organic beer, chat to the waitress, Cecilia, who welcomes us, and settle down amidst dozens of people of all ages and origins, all looking rather...well... peaceful!

A daytime shot of "Aonda" bar (note the XL solar cooker on the left!):

Nice... Suddenly people start raising their hands in the air and all fall silent - and as the hands come back down a man speaks to introduce a slideshow on a large screen. What follows are photos from a pilgrimage carried out last year by a part of the Tamera community in Israel and Palestine. The images of both landscapes and people are very powerful. We are sitting next to a very nice couple who were on the pilgrimage, and they give us explanations and answer our questions. About 80 people, including 8 children, began the three week pilgrimage for peace, and by the end there were about 250. Along the way they met with Palestinians, Israelis, Beduins... All opened themselves to their message. What an experience for everyone... It turns out that peace pilgrimages are one of the actions the community carry out, under the name of GRACE, and led by Sabine Lichtenfels, one of the three co-founders of the Tamera community. In fact they are planning one next October to threatened peasant villages in Colombia.

Fascinated by what we have heard so far, we go back to our van, cook ourselves a meal while we discuss our impressions, and look forward to a full day ahead of Summer University... We cannot even begin to imagine what lies ahead...

Day 18 - Extrema+dura

In the morning owner Ana returns to Cerro Caña. She has chosen to build a centre that completely fits in with the official regulations, in the form of a Hotel Rural, which has cost her a lot of money and effort (even installing equipment she will hardly use, but that is required to become official). Now, though, she has the space in which to carry out educational activities in a different way to the established norm. Both Anas chat about our respective teaching philosophies and methods, which seem very similar, as well as the problems that we both find in putting them into practice, mainly due to the difficulty in finding bright young educators who can think for themselves and develop their own teaching tools to transmit a systemic Gaian philosophy. Anyone of this description looking for a job in the hills of northern Andalusia, get in touch!


We leave wishing Cerro Caña lots of success and waving goodbye to our hosts.

The house dog who watched over us during the night can just about muster the energy to wag goodbye:

We continue our route through Sierra Morena and head towards Portugal, landscapes dotted everywhere with oak trees. Frequent stops are required due to the heat...

"Are we nearly there...?"

This is the land of jamón serrano, Spanish cured ham, and specifically the best ones which are labelled "jamón 5 bellotas"as the pigs are let loose to eat the acorns (bellotas) from the holm oak trees (encinas). Cork oaks (alcornoques) are harvested every nine years, by taking the outer layers of bark, which gives the trees are very striking look.

We decide to park up for the night next to a river or something we can swim in, so we aim for what looks like a natural park with rivers. However, we find that all the land is fenced in and marked "privado". Driving further and further into the park, we finally find a fork in the road with a flat bit, not fenced in, and we stop there. The trees surrounding us are beautiful, majestic, protective, but the fences, some electrified, make us uneasy...

Day 17 - Sierra Morena Jewels

We have discovered a great internet place - cheap, friendly, and with AIR CONDITIONING! where we spend most of the scorching day connecting ourselves to the world. We have decided to head for Sierra Morena, where there should be rivers to cool off at, so we research the area online. We discover a very interesting-sounding place, call to ask if we can visit, and bingo! The owner can receive us that evening. After lunch we say goodbye to our lovely parking spot with great views and the trees that have shaded us:

On our way we stop off for a visit to Medina Azahara, the palace and small city that the sultan had built for his favourite wife. It did not last long as it was destroyed by berbers only 3 years after being completed, was ransacked time and time again, and was then buried over time. Archaeologists discovered this place and have been digging it up - they estimate only 10% of it has been uncovered... and it is incredible!

Resting on the cool marble of the sultan's reception room:

These are mainly reproductions, but enough to impress with what must have been:

The (very intense) heat of the afternoon cuts our visit short and we continue our route North to Sierra Morena. Ice-creams, dips in all available cool water sources... all acceptable to deal with these soaring temperatures.

Danny in the position we are often found in during this African heat wave:

Arriving at our destination, Cerro Caña, which advertises itself as centre for environmental education, we find a very thoughtfully purpose-built country hotel (Hotel Rural) which boasts three separate guest houses for up to six people each, three large rooms for activities to be carried out indoors, a fully equipped bar and restaurant... all designed and run by Ana, a young local woman, mother of two, who studied biology and permaculture, and firmly believes in educating children to appreciate and enjoy nature. Since opening last november she has been hosting activities for children from local schools here. You can imagine, this Ana and our Ana had a lot in common as well as their name! Fascinating conversation flows between us...

After showing us the installations, and enjoying an interesting exchange of ideas, she shows us the children's favourite part: the animals!

Who could fail to be won over by this attractive character?

Although she has to go to a family gathering and will not return until the morning, Ana invites us to spend the night on her land. As night falls, we cook ourselves a very delicious meal on our little stove in the shelter of the house portico, and enjoy an evening under millions of stars and the Milky Way...

Cerro Caña is ideal for people wishing to hold a course (and we know there are many of you out there!), as it has super-prepared installations with all mod cons, can sleep around 20 people, and sits upon a small hill with views all around to the rural area of oak trees and cereal plantations. It really feels "out in the boonies", but is in fact only 80 kms from Cordoba city.

Unfortunately the guy who made her website has disappeared and left her in the lurch, so her site has not been updated since the opening of the centre, but it will give you a good idea and further info, so do visit it if you are looking for a break away from it all (she also caters for small groups, couples...) or to organise a course or some kids' activities there: http://www.cerrocanya.com/

Day 16 - Oasis in Cordoba

Awakening and breakfasting surrounded by olive trees and their scent is a very peaceful start to the day, before driving to our next destination: Cordoba. As the hours and the miles go by, we are amazed to see field upon field and valley upon valley of olive groves, as far as the eye can see. This is after all Europe's main olive oil production area! That's a lot of olives! Danny, always the practical mind, can't help but wonder at the amount of human work required to pick them all...

Arriving in Cordoba, we find a great parking spot right on the other side of the Guadalquivir river from the famous Cordoba mezquita (mosque). Here's our view of it:


Cordoba in the 10th century, under the Moors, was the biggest city in Western Europe, with dazzling architecture, libraries, a university and highly skilled artisans of all types. This particular mezquita was one of the wonders of the world, unique in its kind even for the Moors, as it replicated a huge oasis of palm trees of 14.000 m2, with a total of 1293 columns and red-and-white arches disappearing into infinity. Here, thousands of worshippers would gather to pray to Alah. Imagine what that must have been like! Trust the Catholic Church to spoil things: when they conquered this city, they destroyed almost half of the columns to plonk a Cathedral in the middle of the mosque! Even king Carlos I, at the time, said to the Church authorities: "you have destroyed something that was unique to the world"... However, we find out that the sultan who had this mezquita built had himself destroyed the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and forced Christian slaves to carry its bells all the way to this mezquita to be used as oil lamps! It's really a question of successive faiths squashing one another instead of rejoicing in the greatness of each other and what they have in common...

Little do we know, we have arrived just in time for an African heat wave. With temperatures at around 43º C, walking the streets of Cordoba makes us feel like pilgrims in the desert. Anita the dog is not allowed into air-conditioned bars, so when we find the famous Patio de los Naranjos, with its shady orange tree grove, and in the middle of it a large fountain, we agree to spend large parts of the afternoon, in between walks, sitting there with our legs in the cool water and Anita getting periodic showers.

After some more sight-seeing, we reward our heroic efforts with an ice-cold beer in a bar appropriately named "El Olivo", at the end of what we think is the prettiest street we have seen yet, with an ancient city wall and moat full of water and plants facing lovely little houses with hanging flowers, and a beautiful cascade of water at the other end. This photo really does not do it justice at all, but here it goes:

After being shafted at a tapas bar (nothing to do with Granada and its free delicious tapas!), and a good chat to the backdrop of Cordoba-by-night, we retire to our humble abode (thankfully shaded by big trees) for the night.

Day 15 - Alhambra Beauty

Realising we are carrying too much weight for our brave old vehicle (you know what it's like, you think you'll need loads and end up wearing the same two dresses and an old t-shirt! - Ana), we spend the morning sorting through it all and re-packing, and manage to organise our excess luggage to be delivered to Ana's parents' home in Vitoria, whom we will visit further along our trip. Forget couriers, this was efficient, cheap (1 € per kg.)and fast - it was all there the next day! It's called Alsina Express and seems to be located at all major Spanish bus stations - a good tip for all mover-travellers. And thanks Mum and Dad for kindly storing it all!


The Alhambra beckons, and on the phone we are told there are still tickets left for the garden visit today, so we find our way there, hoping to get some...

"Will this queue in the scorching sun be worth it?"

Destiny provided us with the very last two tickets of the day! :)

A word of advice: book your visit in advance if at all possible, as there is a limit of 6600 tickets available each day. Call 902 441221 for info.


We are obviously destined to enjoy at least the beautiful gardens of this majestic Moorish palace. Some pictures....

The Sultan's wife's summer resting place:

Gorgeous trees are everywhere...

Imagine, ten centuries ago, people walking through these gardens and palaces... philosophising, negotiating, seducing....

Yer classic Alhambra pic & pose:

A beautiful visit! The garden was trippy enough with all that green (thanks Ras!), although if there is a next time we will certainly aim for the main indoor palaces, with their sacred geometry and amazing sculptings...

We leave Granada, missing the tapas already, and head northwest towards Cordoba. Following a hunch, we pull into a lane to find a good nightspot amongst very old olive trees, with a great view of surrounding mountains. Danny cooks up one of his specials as we plan the next days...