Finca Exotica: An Off-the-Grid
Garden of Delights on the Osa Peninsula

By Dorothy MacKinnon
Special to The Tico Times | editorial@ticotimes.net

Finca Exotica is one garden paradise that lives up to the promise of its name. At the very end of the bumpy road from Puerto Jimenez to Carate on southwestern Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, this combination organic farm, botanical garden and eco-lodge is notable not only for its focus on sustainable living, but also for the delightful contrast between its remote setting and its sophisticated hospitality.

A quintessentially tropical cabin at Finca Exotic.

The finca, on about 90 hectares, is the creation of Markus Wehrmeister, a German architect turned caterer turned organic gardener, who had a quasi-Utopian vision seven years ago of transforming a worn-out subsistence farm into a model of organic farming, sustainable living and hospitality and natural beauty.

Wehrmeister sums up the guiding principle behind his vision with this aphorism: "In China, they say, 'If you want to be happy for a day, kill a pig and share it with friends. If you want to be happy for a year, get married. If you want to be happy for a lifetime, plant a garden.'"

And plant a garden he did. Over the last seven years, aided by employees and volunteers, Wehrmeister has planted more than 125 species of tropical fruits, a thousand trees, including more than a dozen different species of palms, 15 species of bananas and plantains, seven species of bamboo and countless flowering ornamentals and edible plants.

But Wehrmeister didn't stop at plants. With the goal of being as self-sufficient as possible, he also built a duck house, a henhouse and a pig enclosure. An architect, Wehrmeister couldn't help but infuse even these farmyard structures with elegant design elements. The realities of jungle farming made some adjustments necessary, however. During a heavy rain period last year, a hungry ocelot broke into the poultry houses, ate the ducks and killed most of the chicks and hens. The pig survived with just a chicharron bitten off one flank. Now each of the livestock enclosures is totally enclosed and, Wehrmeister hopes, ocelot-proof.

The blue Pacific is steps away.

A tour of the organic farm and gorgeous garden includes tastes of edible plants along the way. Wehrmeister introduced me to katuk, a spicy salad green reminiscent of spinach. Just rip the dark green leaves off the stem and pop them into your mouth. Another tasty leaf comes from the limon criollo tree - a handful will wake up your taste buds in the morning. Along with the garden tour, the main activities here are boogie boarding and beachcombing on Playa Carate and hiking into Corcovado National Park, just a 45-minute beach walk away.

The lodging here is as exotic as the garden and just as carefully designed. Five quintessentially tropical cabins are built of bamboo, thatch and unobtrusive screening, affording privacy while remaining as open to the garden as possible. The feeling is more tiki than tico : Each cabin looks as though it belongs on a South Seas island, a feeling reinforced by the steady sound of the surf, just steps away. Bathrooms have elegant ceramic sinks, flush toilets and an open window to the garden. Showers are in separate bamboo and cane enclosures in private gardens. Stunning flower arrangements, beautiful batik fabrics and woven-palm hangings add a touch of sophistication. They're the handiwork of Costa Rican artist, potter and teacher Gabriela Madriz, who makes her home here with Wehrmeister.

For the more adventurous - and budget-minded - six platform tents are scattered around two garden areas, sharing open-to-the-sky showers and bathrooms. These are not your standard camping tents. Wehrmeister's innovative design uses translucent nylon that lets in lots of light, with interestingly shaped, zippered windows screened with aphid-proof netting to allow for maximum air flow and privacy.

With his eye for aesthetics, Wehrmeister set his tents on light, portable bamboo frames, topped with thatch roofs. Bamboo decks and entries pebbled with washed-up beach stones complete the idyllic, castaway-island look. Inside, though, these thatched huts have comfortable queen-size or single mattresses, draped in fresh linens.

Staying true to his Chinese aphorism, Wehrmeister also practices what he preaches when it comes to food. The first time I dropped by, a visiting chef from the U.S. state of Wisconsin had just butchered and cooked up the farm pig. I joined other guests in the garden to feast on tender, barbecued pork ribs.

My next, longer visit was a culinary extravaganza. The first night, guests gathered in Wehrmeister and Madriz's handsome house, perched high atop what Wehrmeister calls "Edible Hill," with 360-degree views of ocean and coastline. Designed and built by Wehrmeister, the wooden house is built on horizontal planes reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, with built-in cabinetry and cushioned seating.

Wehrmeister and Madriz worked in the open kitchen to produce a truly exotic meal, starting with appetizers of fresh tuna sashimi and seared tuna chunks, followed by red snapper cooked in a spicy Indian paste, accompanied by a medley of spinach and kale braised in a sake, sesame oil and mirin sauce, atop jasmine rice. Dessert was a spicy fruit compote of banana, pineapple and caramelized carambola (star fruit). All the raw ingredients were grown on the finca, except for the fish, courtesy of a local fisherman.

The next night's dinner was down in the garden, a cooperative effort by Madriz, Wehrmeister and his brother Wieland, a chef visiting from Germany, as well as U.S. volunteer Amory Tarr, an experienced organic farmer. The meal was proof that organic doesn't mean boring.

We started with a hot and sour Mexican soup, a favorite of Wehrmeister, who was born in Mexico and lived on a farm there until he was 11. Next came a savory coconut curry chicken padang, flavored with lemongrass, turmeric and ginger, topped with tender curry-plant leaves. Every dinner features a truly tropical salad concocted by Madriz and served on a huge wooden platter decorated with flowers. This night, the salad included colorful chunks of watermelon, avocado, tomato and carrot atop a bed of cabbage and crispy katuk leaves, dressed in a balsamic and honey vinaigrette. Dessert was caramelized carambola and bananas in red wine and coconut milk.

Breakfasts here include excellent coffee, fresh farm eggs, home-baked raisin bread, pancakes, gallo pinto, yogurt-and-fruit smoothies and, of course, fresh fruit. Even the picnic lunch we took on a day hike into Corcovado was out of the ordinary, with chunks of spicy tuna and sauteed onions wedged between grilled slices of dense homemade bread.

Wehrmeister's ultimate dream for Finca Exotica is to create not only a model of sustainable living, but also an educational environment for both locals and visitors, offering seminars on bridge building and organic farming, for example, as well as English lessons. The finca's reception area has a wide-ranging Spanish-language library and a huge pool table, which has been a real draw for locals, helping to turn Finca Exotica into Carate's de facto community center.

The key concept, Wehrmeister says, is to provide a place where people can expand their horizons. For tourists, that can be as simple as taking time to listen to the surf, soak up the natural beauty, sleep well and eat exotically.

Labels: A StepOut Experience Vacation, green and sustainable vacationing, organic

Did you see anything you had not seen before? Did you eat anything your had never eaten before? Did you feel anything you had never felt before? Did you do anything you couldn't have done at home?

If you answered "No" to any or all of the above questions, I recommend you fire your travel agent and contact StepOut Experience immediately.

I would like to share a personal experience with you. I spent some time in Holland a few years ago, and of course I toured around the Amsterdam. I walked to the main commercial district near the train station and I remember feeling distinctly disappointed at what I saw: McDonald's, the Gap, Calvin Klein, Gucci, Starbucks, and so on and so forth. The iconic institutions of my culture had followed me overseas! I remember thinking "I may as well be walking down Yonge Street in Toronto or St. Catherine's Street in Montreal".

Is this what travel is really for? Are we really meant to travel to foreign locations to experience the cookie-cutter institutions of our own country? In the opinion of this writer, the point of a vacation is to remove ourselves from what is ordinary and repetitive in our lives. And yet at the end of some of my vacations, I found myself asking, "Why did I bother to leave home?" It occurred to me that I had spent X amount of money, and had only succeeded in seeing things I could have seen at home. The only novelty was that I was buying the same crap using foreign currencies.

Add to that the fact that I am also a product of a consumer-culture-gaining-a-conscience-about-the-world-around-me, albeit slowly. Traveling to foreign destinations via package tours found me lounging in luxury hotels separated by fences and armed guards from the cultures in which they were situated. My conscience was aggravated by the fact that my experiences of the countries I was in was vastly different than the average person living immediately beside the resort. In short, I felt guilty that I was living a life of conspicuous wealth in the midst of sometimes extreme poverty. I felt as though I was exploiting the culture that I was in without ever really having touched it in its purest sense. Yes, some of my fellow travelers justified this to themselves and others by saying that the dollars we spent went back to the local communities, but nagging at the back of my mind was the fact that the actual communities likely saw very little of the money we were spending.

StepOut Experience is a unique travel company with a simple philosophy that focuses on three main elements: 1. Stepping out of our everyday routine, including the rut that most travel companies have fallen into with strictly-regimented package tours, 2. Sustainable, eco-friendly tourism, encouraging travelers to learn more about the fragile, complex and astounding ecosystems in other parts of the world, and emphasizing a low-impact method of travel that keeps abreast of environmental concerns and issues, and 3. Volunteering for local preservation and goodwill organizations, giving back to the larger communities that are traveled to rather than merely taking from them, leaving a few paltry dollars in return for the privilege of staying in their country.

OK, so that third point may leave some readers scratching their heads. "Why would I want to take a vacation and work?", I can hear the naysayer asking. True, you could spend two hours in line in the baking sun to get your picture taken with Mickey Mouse, or you could spend two hours on a beach in Costa Rica helping local organizations rescue baby turtles. Ask yourself the following questions: Which of those activities sounds more relaxing? Which of those activities would actually make for a lifelong memory? Which of those activities would make me feel better about myself and the planet I live on?

And such is the StepOut way. Visit unspoiled wilderness which will remain unspoiled thanks to our green philosophy; get to know cultures without the taint of pre-packaged travel itineraries; stay at a solar-powered lodge in an area which National Geographic has dubbed "the most biologically intense place on earth"; get out of the concrete jungle.

If you like bright lights, dance clubs and overpriced drinks, by all means continue to do business with your travel agent. However, if you are beginning to feel that your vacations have become as predictable and humdrum as your daily life, if you are not afraid to break a sweat, if adventure beckons to you, then I recommend you call StepOut Experience.

Tourism is only travel. StepOut Experience is a journey.

Labels: A StepOut Experience Vacation