I’ve been promising updates on some more of the cool stuff from Costa Rica, but the last few weeks have been crazy. I spent my week off in Costa Rica checking out some new stuff for next year’s trips, changing some stuff for the last trip this year, and spending some quality vacation time. The last trip in Costa Rica was a bit of a whirlwind followed by a rush to get everything cleaned up, packed up and stored before returning to the States.

I landed MSP last Tuesday and hung in Minneapolis for about 36 hours before packing up my car and driving to Vermont, where I’ve been since Saturday night. I’ve been enjoying some time hanging out with friends and doing all I can not to think about work at all.

I briefly mentioned Rancho Margot in one of my past blogs. It is a self sufficient, organic ranch that sits tucked into a valley between Monteverde, the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest, and Volcan Arenal.

The Children’s Eternal Rain Forest (CERF) is a large reserve that borders the Monteverde reserve. In 1987 a group of students in Europe decided that they could do something to help with the destruction of rainforest in Central and South America. They worked to collect a huge amount of money, money that was used to purchase a large block of rainforest in Costa Rica. Through bake sales, recycling collections, and private donations, the original purchase was for just over 10 acres of land in 1988. In the nearly 20 years that has passed since the original purchase, the organization has grown to include schools all over Europe, and the reserve has grown to over 54,000 acres.

So, back to Rancho Margot: The vision of Rancho Margot is to be a fully self sufficient and organic ranch, with an emphasis on protection of the rainforest around it and education of the tourists who visit it.

Amongst its projects:

RM has an up and running dairy operation. Its small herd of dairy cows is milked daily to provide milk for the restaurant. Extra milk is used in a cheese production facility that they have built. This cheese is both used in the restaurant and sold on site. They also have a large number of free range chickens that produce eggs for the restaurant. In the works is a hog facility for pork for their restaurant.

With the large number of cattle and hogs that they will have on the ranch, they decided to make use of some of the “natural byproduct.” They are building a processing plant to convert manure into a natural gas that will be used to heat their hot tubs and in the kitchen for the stoves and ovens.

Speaking of power, the ranch has a small hydroelectric plant. A small portion of a stream that runs through the ranch is diverted through a hydroelectric turbine and then back out into the stream. The result is completely clean, byproduct free electricity. Enough electricity is produced to power the entire ranch: guest rooms and restaurant included.

There are huge organic gardens that grow just about everything you can imagine: lettuce, carrots, cilantro, cashews, coconuts, beets, radishes, just to name a few! The food is used in the restaurant to make some of the freshest salads and side dishes you can imagine. Even though large quantities of each food are grown in the gardens, only small batches of each are found in one spot. Growing small patches dispersed throughout the gardens is a way of deterring bugs and diseases. Large patches draw in more bugs and allow disease to spread more easily. Because most diseases are distinct to each plant, by dividing up the crop, even if one plant gets sick, the disease doesn’t spread to the entire crop.

Beyond the farming aspect of the ranch, Rancho Margot has a lot of other projects going. They have an animal rescue center for animals that are injured in the wild or that are kept in captivity. The goal is to rehabilitate these animals for return to the jungles. Most of the animals in the rescue center now have been rescued from hotels that kept the monkeys in small cages without much room to move or kept the toucans in the lobbies with wings clipped.

A ranch the size of Rancho Margot, with as many projects as it has in the works, needs a lot of help. RM relies heavily on volunteers. It has a large program in place of language school. Volunteers come in to work in the gardens, help with the animals, or build new accommodations, and in exchange they receive two to three hours per day of language training, and reduced rates on the room and board.

Even those only interested in being on vacation will find a great home for a few days at Rancho Margot. RM offers horseback rides, hikes, bike tours, waterfall climbing and rappelling, kayak tours and so much more. With three levels of accommodations – high level private bungalows, mid level field house and budget backpackers’ dorms – there is a place for anyone on any budget.

We discovered Rancho Margot by accident. We finished up a day of work early during our Final Trip Prep and decided to go for a quick ride. We knew there was a road that went out past Volcan Arenal and alongside Lago Arenal. We didn’t think we could use it on trip because, as far as we knew it didn’t go anywhere, but we thought we would ride it anyway. We had some extra time, and from time to time it’s nice to do a ride that we don’t do on trip. We got out to the end of the road and there was Rancho Margot. After a quick tour of the ranch we decided it was something that had to be included in our trip. It’s great when you kind of accidentally stumble upon something that becomes a really awesome feature of the trip.

For more info, visit: www.ranchomargot.org