Life at the organic vegan farm and animal sanctuary Planet Costa Rica

If you are up for learning a lot about animal care, vegan nutrition & cooking, plants and permaculture, Planet Costa Rica is the perfect place. It is a vegan farm and animal sanctuary near the little village of Tucurrique, run by Allan & Patty, a couple from USA who have been living in Costa Rica for the last almost 10 years. These people are absolutely amazing and the world would be a better place if there were more Allan and Pattys out there. They take in injured and sick animals, give them the food, shelter, love and care that they need.

If you do want to come here though, be sure to apply in time as they get plenty of volunteer inquiries every day. We booked our stay several months in advance and have just finished our 3 week work stay at this lovely place.

Getting there was easy because of the detailed instructions we had received beforehand. We got a bus from San Jose to Cartago first and then another bus towards Tucurrique (the village that is known for the delicious Pejibaye, a vegetable or fruit or some kind of different coconut, that doesn't at all taste or look like coconut. I still don't know what it is exactly. All I know is that it is yummy with mustard and as spread on bread).

The view form this bus journey is stunning. It felt so great coming from the really hot weather on the coast into the mountains, where it was still humid but way more manageable.

The bus stops just outside of the farm, just as long as you let the bus driver know that this is where you want to get off, of course, otherwise you will end up somewhere else.

We were greeted by Allan (Patty was on a trip in Colombia during our time at the farm) and the barking dogs when we got there and it made us feel welcomed from the start. Allan showed us around the property and we got to meet all the animals; the seven dogs, the cat, three pigs, three hens, a rooster and one horse.

The daily routine

We thought that getting up early every day was going to be a struggle for us, but it really wasn't. We got into the daily routine really quickly, because in the evening we felt so exhausted in that good way when you feel like you've actually done something in the day.

So at 5:30 the alarm clock went off and that was about the same time the pigs, Gumby, Rosanna and Yolanda also woke up, feeling super hungry and weren't afraid to let us know by making loud noises that we heard clearly from the little casita where we slept.

Every morning when we opened the door to our casita we were greeted by Palomo the horse who was also feeling hungry, and usually some of the dogs would be outside waiting for us as well. So feeding the pigs and Palomo and cleaning out the pig homes was usually the first thing we did in the day.

Then it was ours and the dogs turn to get food. All of the dogs gets vegan food served every day, usually consisting of boiled rice, lentils or chickpeas mixed with blended veggies such as carrots, cucumber, capsicum, spinach, cilantro and chayote. Us humans got to have a wonderful mountain of fresh fruit with oats for breakfast, topped with coconut flakes, cinnamon and raisins. Bliss.

My favourite part of the working day was definitely feeding the dogs. They were all so excited about their food, but were so polite that they just sat quite around the table to wait to get their bowl served to them.

After breakfast it was time to take Kendall for a walk. We took her up the hill and down to the river close by, and usually some of the other dogs would come along as well. Actually, Lyca would come along every day to have a swim in the river with us.

After letting the chickens out for the day, and cleaning their house, we started with daily projects. During the 3 weeks we were there we did all kinds of different things and had a lot of firsts. Such as using a machete to cut down banana trees, making concrete and building fences.

One day we planted tomato plants and gave them shelter to grow. Allan and Patty have so many different plants around the farm that it is impossible to mention them all. But some of the things that we found in the garden was mango trees, papaya plants, ginger, spinach, banana trees, yuca and yeah, like I said. A lot more aswell.

Another day we re-built parts of the chicken house, which was probably the hardest job we done since neither Guy or I have ever really built anything before. But it was nice being trusted with doing these things and it turned out to be a really fun project!

One day we emptied and refilled the broken jacuzzi, so that the dog Buddy could have some healing water therapy, which always made him more active afterwards (Buddy is almost completely blind and has trouble walking so he spends most of the day sleeping)

The biggest project we did was to change Palomos fence from barbed wire to wooden sticks that we chopped down from stick-land up in the woods, using machetes. Lyca loved following us to help us up in Stick-land as well.

Even though the work was fun, the highlight of our day was of course when time came for lunch. Allans cooking is incredible to say the least. He used to be a chef at the vegetarian restaurant he and Patty ran in New York, so we were extremely spoilt with different dishes every day, like;

Tacos with soy chunks and veggies

Chickpea burgers with mushroom gravy and home made burger buns

Red bean burgers, again with home made burger buns and quinoa

Vegetable curry in a creamy coconut sauce

Spaghetti with soy chunks in tomato sauce

Yuca patties stuffed with refried beans served with cauliflower cheese and veggies

Pizza with home made wholewheat flour crust and cauliflower cheese

Mac and cheese

Home made bagels made with wholewheat flour

Sooooo. You can probably understand that we felt stuffed and, very happy, after every single lunch. It was the perfect finish to a work day.

On our time off

On the farm.
After lunch at around 1 pm, we usually just hung around the farm because we simply loved it there so much and couldn't get enough of cuddles with the animals.

Guy loved reading books about Costa Rica and to do some serious Sudoko-ing in the afternoons, whereas I did yoga and read books about animal care that Allan lent me and I also made my own necklace from beads that I found growing in the garden!

On really hot days, we enjoyed just going up the hill to the river to have a refreshing swim there.

Feria Verde de Aranjuez

One Saturday, Allan invited us to go with him to the weekly organic market Feria Verde in San Jose. We took the bus there after we and all the animal had had breakfast. I do however feel like I didn't really need breakfast that day as there were plenty of food for us to try here.

We had some yummy lattes with cashew nut milk for instance and tried vegan chocolate, ice cream, spreads, strawberries and delicious breads and much more. We browsed through cool clothing and jewellery stands and were able to buy fruit and veggies to take home aswell. The best buy was definitely the vegan pesto and cheap tahini, that I unfortunately couldn't resist to have a spoonful of every day back home at the farm, so it was gone pretty quickly.

Before we left the market we had a big lunch with gallo pinto, plantain and a potato filled tortilla wrap.

Shopping, eating and using wifi in Turrialba

The closest town to Planet Costa Rica is Turrialba. It's only a 30 minute bus journey away and on that journey we could spot the volcano on a clear day as well.

We went there to go shopping in second hand stores (called Ropa Americana) and to visit the loveliest man in town, Minor, where we could buy refreshing pipa (young coconut) and he was always there to help if we needed anything or had any questions about anything really. It felt safe knowing that he was always there in his veggie stand next to the bus stop.

At Cafeteria Merayo we could use wifi, have coffee and also eat the accidentally vegan cinnamon bread sent from above (or from the bakery next door to be more exact). I am probably known as the crazy cinnamon-bread-girl because I would ask about when the cinnamon bread would be ready probably 4 times in a day.

Turrialba is truly a town that has everything that you need. Even though there are no vegetarian restaurants, there are at least several little stores called Macrobioticas where we found many different vegan items to take home, such as soya pate, soy chunks, whole wheat flour, chocolate, nuts and seeds and more.

La Marta National Park

8 km from Planet Costa Rica is the oldest national park in Costa Rica called La Marta. If you are really lucky you can spot some wildlife (there are jaguars living there!), but you can be sure to have an adventurous jungle walk.

We went here on one of our days off and went up one of the view points where we could have stayed forever because of this amazing view where we could spot Turrialba volcano.

The only problem was that we had already exhausted ourselves with walking almost all the way to the national park from the farm, so when we got into the national park our feet were already aching loads. So we were happy that we were able to catch a ride back with two nice men who let us sit in the back of their truck full of veggies.

Swimming in Rio Pejibaye
Allan and Patty have many fun and friendly friends that stopped by the farm once in a while, to just hang out or to offer to take us to karaoke nights. One of these friendly friends is Hugo, who invited us to come with him to have a swim in a quite area of the beautiful Pejibaye river and we also visited the sugar factory nearby where we got to try the dulce and sneak peak on the process of making it. Afterwards he took us to his ranch where we had coffee and got to practice our Spanish a little bit.

Football at Soda Rita

Planet Costa Rica is just outside the tiny village Las Vueltas and it takes about 10 minutes to walk here. There is only one small restaurant here called Soda Rita, where they make delicious vegan gallo pinto for a very cheap price and where we spent some afternoons watching English football and to have coffee.

Experimenting in the cafe

Yes it's true. Planet Costa Rica has their own cafe, which is mostly used as a kitchen for volunteers and for Allan and Patty. Sometimes on occasions they have the cafe open for the public and they sell soy cappuccinos and other things. It was probably the best kitchen I have ever cooked in, with the best blender ever, so I did spend a lot of time in here, just trying to learn more vegan cooking and baking.

Allan taught me loads. We made a banana bread using just ripe banana, baking soda, oats and cacao one day and he also revealed the secret wholewheat bread recipe that he uses for when he makes the pizza dough, burger buns and the bagels.

But yeah, the VitaMix blender was definitely my best friend in the kitchen and so I made ice cream from just frozen bananas and cacao powder which turned out to be so yummy and creamy that it was easy to overindulge, and we also made our own almond milk from scratch.

Another first we could have because of the Vitamix (and thanks to Allans cooking skills) was making cheese from just cauliflower. All I did was grate cauliflower, boil it until it was soft and then put it in the blender along with jalapeños and a tiny bit of turmeric. So we did have many dinners topped with this creamy cheese, along with many glasses of banana smoothies.

The worst part of this whole experience was of course leaving the farm. We fell in love with all of the animals and have loved living on the Costa Rican countryside. I especially miss my little Mexican, Bello, who always loved to cuddle up in our laps (especially when we sat down for lunch and/or breakfast). Even though he is a tiny dog, that once got his legs broken by a machete, he would always run after us wherever we went.

But although goodbyes are always hard, we do know that all of these animals have the best home in the world which makes it a lot easier.

Thank you again Planet Costa Rica for the awesome three weeks. We would come back in a heartbeat and would highly recommend coming here to anyone who is thinking of visiting Central America. Visit their website and get more information about the work, the farm and the animals here.

A quick visit in Dominical and Uvita, Costa Rica

After a few really good days in Manuel Antonio, we felt ready to explore two small beach villages, that we'd heard great things about, about 1-2 hours bus ride away; Dominical and Uvita.

Problem with Costa Rica is that the bus system is not as extensive as it is in South America. Here you really have to plan your trip unless you want to sit at a bus station for hours. We've found that even if there are bus schedules, it changes all the time and buses are rarely on time. When we were gonna take a bus back from Domincal to Uvita for example, the bus left 20 minutes before the scheduled time.. 

So because of this we had some trouble getting from Manuel Antonio to Uvita, as there is only 2 buses a day. But after getting help from very friendly locals we somehow managed to get there.

As usual, we had reserved our two nights accommodation through Booking.com, and realised that we shouldn't have for these places as almost nothing came up, and the once that did were pretty expensive aswell. The best thing here would've been to just rock up to one of the hostels.

But in the end we had a pretty good accommodation and were able to explore one day in each village. They are really different, even though we'd heard that they are similar. Domincal is more of a cosy little surf village, with monster waves. Whereas Uvita is far more stretched out. It has like two small centres next to each other by the main road, so it feels like you're on the countryside somewhere in the US and from this center we had to walk for about half an hour to get to the beach. Anyway, here's how we spent our days in each village.

Uvita 

With the constant intense heat humid air, our first aim was to find the Uvita Waterfall. It was only a short walk to the entrance, where we had to pay $2 each in order to see and have a lovely swim in the refreshing water. It wasn't busy with people at all, which made it even better.

Then we took many detours on the many different dirt paths before we found the beach, where, in low tide, you can see that the beach is shaped like a whale tale.

We found that the beach is actually a part of a national park, with loads of screaming monkeys and I feared to get a coconut thrown in my head. There were loads everywhere. I wish I was able to open up coconuts myself!

We stayed to watch the sunset on the beach and it was a perfect beach for an evening stroll. Before we went back to our hostel (when we got lost again by the way, this time in the dark and THAT was freaky) we ran into a small little restaurant along the road that served vegan soy meat burgers. So random and almost too good to be true. Well, actually it kind of was as we both had bad stomach cramps later on that night..

Dominical

The next day we took one bus from Uvita to Dominical, which is about 20 minutes away. We came here mainly for the food, as this village is way more vegan friendly and is a place for a yogi. Well, it would probably be paradise for someone who wants to eat vegetarian, surf and do some yoga. 

The beach in itself was a bit disappointing, a lot of trash and the waves were, like I mentioned earlier, MONSTER waves. And for someone like me who's scared of waves, it was just too much. They even have big warning signs to look up for the strong currents.

There were also lots of souvenir stalls where we could kill some time by just looking at everything, but the highlight was of course the food. I could've spent the whole day eating if I wanted to (and if I had the money!) 

First food stop of the day, was vegetarian Cafe Mono Congo where we had some brunch. They know vegan here, but unfortunately there weren't that many meals that could be turned into vegan. We had the burrito, which wasn't great but still good. 

Still regret not trying one of the vegan desserts and shakes (I mean chocolate papaya cake!!!)

But we did have dessert next door instead and that was awesome. Mama Toucans is a little natural food market with loads of vegan food items. Everything from tofu, tempeh (!!!), to almond cheese, quinoa, grains and, most importantly, ICE CREAM!

I almost screamed for ice cream when I saw that they sold all different kinds of ice creams, different flavours of sorbets and coconut cream based ones. 

As the chocolate maniac I am it didn't take me long to decide to go for the coconut chocolate one, which I sprinkled with some dried banana/coconut granola we got as free tester (the friendly guy working there also gave us free samples for peanut butter with chocolate flavour.. Bliss)

We spent most of the day in Dominical on the beach, recovering from all the yummy things we've had. It was pretty boring in the end to be honest, as it's not much else to do around here. 

We did have more room in our bellies before we left Dominical for the day though, and therefore stopped by the more posh vegan friendly restaurant Maracatu. They knew vegan by heart, and had such an amazing menu. Guy had the vegetable curry, which he'd been longing for for a very long time and I finally got some tofu when I ordered the teriyaki tofu with brown rice. Such a satisfying meal, so I didn't care that it was a tiny bit more money than we usually pay for food.

In the end of the day, it felt totally worth going to Domincal from Manuel Antonio, just to fill up on great vegan food.

The first days of Costa Rica in Manuel Antonio

It makes me so sad to think about the earthquake in Ecuador. Such a beautiful country, with beautiful people where we had the best time of our travels so far. My love and my thoughts are with the people who are having to suffer from this. 

We were extremely, incredibly lucky to be at the airport in Quito when the earthquake hit. Our plane was delayed and we would've been in the air when everything started shaking all of a sudden. I didn't really understand what happened until I saw some people getting panicked and everyone stood up to stand by the walls. This was of course nothing close to how hard the earthquake hit in other places in Ecuador, so again, having to evacuate the airport for about 30 minutes and waiting a lot longer for our flight didn't feel like that big of a deal. I am surprised however, that we actually took off that night, but we did.

This is probably the longest journey I've ever had for such a short distance. The cheapest flight option to get from Ecuador to Costa Rica unfortunately meant that we had to do two stopovers in Colombia and El Salvador. About 24 hours after arriving to the airport in Qutio, we were finally at our hostel in Manuel Antonio and felt absolutely exhausted.

We took a public bus to downtown immidately when we got the airport in San Jose, had to get a short taxi ride to the bus terminal and from there we were able to take a bus all the way to Manuel Antonio on the central Pacific coast. After that journey we could just about enjoy the gorgeous sunset before we passed out in bed.

Manuel Antonio is a national park, just next to the little town of Quepos. Most people come here to enjoy the incredible wildlife around here. Of course that is something they take advantage of. Even though all of Manuel Antonio is a national park in itself (with beaches, hotels and restaurants and where we've seen monkeys running around and playing in the mango trees everywhere) there's an area where they say that you'll see most wildlife, and of course you have to pay loads to do so. The park is open from 7am-4pm for an entrance fee of $16, which felt like a rip off (especially since we heard afterwards that you can go on your own to another part of Manuel Antonio to spot wildlife for free) but I hope that this money goes to helping the animals and nature.

We spent several hours in here and saw so many different animals. It was such an amazing day here.

The highlight was of course when we were just about to leave, because the park was closing, and we saw this sloth just hanging of a tree branch, munching on some leaves. So cool!

There are so many different paths to go on in this tropical park and it's a great little hike. Because it is super humid I was also very grateful that there is beach access from the park so that we could have a nice break and get refreshed in the sea. I was pretty happy that we didn't meet a crocodile though.

Besides falling in love even more with animals, Manuel Antonio has been a great place to relax in. We've managed to find a good pool we can use to cool down in (because honestly, this heat is insane) in exchange for us buying a drink and we've found another place to have many games of pool aswell.

We also took a long walk down to a more hidden beach where the waves aren't as big as on the main beach. To get here we had to go through some jungle and spotted even more monkeys, you can probably spot sloths here aswell if you're lucky!

Of course everything's more expensive here than any other place we've been to in South America, which was a bit of a shock at first even though we knew that it was gonna be a lot different before we came here. We realised after buying a bottle of water for $3 that the tap water here is drinkable, and this will of course help us save some money. 

Even though Manuel Antonio is an animal lovers paradise, it is surprising that there is no vegetarian restaurant around here (yes okey it's a small place but still. I don't understand how people can come here to enjoy the wildlife and get amazed by all the animals, to then go and eat an animal..). So to save a bit more money, we've cooked the occasional pasta and beans ourselves a few times as the restaurants that do ecxist are mostly over our budget. 

But since feeling lazy, we have also found some loopholes. 

Gallo Pinto is a Costa Rican breakfast that is basically a mix of rice and beans. It is delicious, it is usually cheap in most places and it is usually vegan (just have to make sure it doesn't come with meat or eggs on the side). We found this little restaurants tucked in on the side of the main beach, where the gallo pinto was amazing and came with fried plantain (fried banana) and we ordered fries and avocado on the side which made this into the perfect brekky for me.

Our favourite place though, is of course the Falafel Bar. The food is cheap for Manuel Antonio, it's so filling and the place is vegan friendly.

We went back here several times because we simply couldn't resist it (so beware, it is addictive! It is the best falafel I've had in a very, very long time.). The falafel with pita bread comes with chips in it and costs about $7. We realised that it was totally unnecessary to order extra fries as the pita filled us up alone. They also make the best smoothies and since they are vegan aswell I just had to have the banana and date one and it was LUSH. 

Id go back to Manuel Antonio in a heartbeat just because of this love I have for the falafel at the falafel bar.

Oh, and how could I almost forget to mention?! One of the top 3 coffee places in Manuel Antonio serves soy- and almond milk! I did a little happy dance when I found out and ordered myself a big glass of vegan mocha frappucino. It was about 2000 colones and SO worth it. And yes, the coffee itself was absolutely amazing. Don't know what beats fighting the humidity; this or going for a swim!

The cafe is called El Patio de Cafe Milagro and has a really nice interior, but really grumpy staff unfortunately. I don't blame them for being grumpy when they have to work in this sweaty heat though.. I don't really care when they have coffee like this and give our free mangoes aswell!