Costa Rica Adventures: Costa Rica Punta Mona Day 21

We went to Punta Mona Center for Sustainable Living and Education for 2 nights. This is a huge organic farm along the southern most Carribean coast of Costa Rica just a few km from the Panama border. The only ways to get there are by boat or a 2 hour hike through the jungle with a machete. We took the boat. The center uses solar panels for power, collects and filters the water for drinking and grows 80% of their food.

The kids absolutely loved going there and didn't want to leave. It was an exciting adventure for us and we are really glad we went. We were supposed to stay 3 nights but there were a few things that weren't working for me so I was wanting to leave early and then we were told a storm was coming in and the boats might not be able to take us out on the day we were supposed to leave (it happens all the time) so we left a day early.

The good:

The gardens were outstanding. They had little colourful wooden signs hanging from some of the trees. Cherries, Guanavana, lime, cacao, pomegranite, zapote, star fruit, papaya, mango, cocnuts. We all had the chance to taste things we've never even heard of - like a fruit that tasted like peanut butter.
For dinner, we went out into the dark garden through a path of jungle that took over the previous 8 years of edible gardens with flashlights and clippers. We picked kutuck, spinach, star fruit and some other delicious green stuff to make the salad.
The food was unbelievably delicious (for me and Christian - not so much for the kids).
The sounds at night: geckos, frogs, crickets - from all directions so seperate but somehow coordinated and perfectly in balance. And then the rain - it was so loud in our cabin that Christian and I could not talk to each other.
The sand castles on the beach.
The hammocks. There were so many hammocks around, we played boat in each one of them.
The firefly's and giant toads at night.
The boat ride to get there: it is an outstanding view, it was warm, the water was fairly calm and we had to surf our boat to get in between
The boat ride to get home: getting stopped by Costa Rican coast guard because we were in an unlabelled unlicensed boat so close to the Panama border.
Toucans.
Uno, gin, pick up sticks, memory with the kids.
The humming bird that liked to fly through our cabin.
The home of an 85 year old man that lives alone, off the grid, in that house on the beach for 50 years. Each night all the volunteers would go over to his house and play dominos for hours.

The bad:

Lying in bed smelling the outhouse beside us.
Snuggling into a blanket that had a giant beetle that pinched me.
Christian sitting on a toilet and finding a small snake crawl on his leg.
Sleeping in a mosquito net with a few mosquitos trapped inside and a 6 inch cricket on top.
Depending on other people for our food and electricity. The first night we hung out in the main dinning area for an hour in the dark alone and hungry. Finally someone came around and turned on the electricity and told us dinner would be in half an hour but that was a Costa Rican half an hour which actually was an hour and a half. So the first night Blake fell asleep in my arms before dinner was ready.
The fly's on the fruit before we ate it.
Being 3 of 10 people in a 60 person camp made us feel very alone.
Mosquitos. We counted over 200 mosquito bites - and that is after using the spray and wearing long pants and shirts. So much for avoiding dengue fever!