A women’s orchid-growing cooperative in the Guanacaste hill country

Margarita Ponce Ortiz, member of the women's orchid-growing collective in Quebrada Grande

Through Curubanda Lodge’s ’social tourism’ program, I could have met up with the proprietors of many small, locally-owned businesses in the hill country of Guanacaste, including a bakery in Dos Rios and a small cheese producer in El Consuelo that makes everything by hand and recycles all that they can, including using the pig dung in biodigestors to make methane gas for cooking.

I visited a women’s cooperative in Quebrada Grande that raises orchids and ornamental plants for sales. The cooperative—the Asociacion de Mujeres Activas de Quebrada Grande (The Active Women’s Association of Quebrada Grande) and spoke with sisters Margarita Ponce Ortiz and Mayra Ponce Ortiz. They showed me around the small but impressive vivero (nursery), where they grow orchids (though they say it’s a little too warm there for that ‘crop’), flowering plants, and even reina de la noche (brugmansia) —with its long, fragrant bell-shaped flowers that supposedly have hallucinogenic properties.

A woman's cooperative nursery in Guanacaste

The cooperative began two and a half years ago when the amas de casa (housewives) of this poor town were looking for a way to make a little extra money and to feel util (useful). Quebrada Grande is on a sliver a land between two national parks, and there isn’t much work to be had here. The majority of the people don’t have much education, so their options are even slimmer.

The women took a course with INA (a government agency that provides job training), who came to Quebrada Grande to teach them how to grow and care for plants.

They started with 40 cooperative members, Margarita told me, but are down to 12, because people want fast money, and the nursery is a slow-growing business that requires patience and dedication.

“The men all say women can’t stick with anything, and we want to show them wrong,” said Margarita.

“But right now we’re having trouble because we don’t have a market for our plants. We take them to ferias (farmer’s markets), but we pay so much for transport that we hardly make any profit.” She looked out over the rows of plants. “We’re thinking of building a web page.”

Wilbirth told me on the way back from the visit to the nursery that Curubanda Lodge was also planning a major upgrade to its web site. I told him that most people I know planned trips by doing research on the web, so that was probably time and money well spent.  But the women’s nursery—I’m not sure how they would benefit from a web page.

Vamos a ver. We’ll see.

Curubanda: History and future of a working farm turned ecotourism lodge

Curubanda Lodge in the Guanacaste hill country

Curubanda Lodge is a small ecotourism lodge in the heart of a working farm—Finca Nueva Zealandia–in the Costa Rican highlands. Its four modest but comfortable guest rooms are within spitting distance of the farm’s dairy, chickens wind their way through the gardens, and on your way back to your room you might have to push through the cows waiting to be milked.

Curubanda Lodge in Guanacaste is also a working dairy.

The Nueva Zealandia farm and dairy has been in the Brizuela family since 1930. At that time, there were few roads, and the family would take milk and cheese by oxcart to Quebrada Grande (often shown as Garcia Flamenco), a small town 13 km away, to trade for staples like rice and beans.

The 100-hectare farm stayed pretty much the same, says Wilberth Brizuela Chavarria, 34, from 1930 to 1980, with successive generations working the dairy and in the fields. The area was high and green enough for dairy cattle, but they also kept chickens and pigs.

In 1980, the government was offering nearby land at a very good price if the buyers would agree to help reforest the area (which had been cleared for farms and pastures) so that there might be a biological corridor between the two volcanoes and the two national parks. The Brizuela family bought up land around the original farm and increased their holdings to 350 hectares.

Another big change for the family farm came in 2000, when Wilbirth finished his business degree at Universidad Latina in Santa Cruz (on the Nicoya Peninsula). The price of milk is notoriously volatile, and Wilbirth came home with big ideas about how the family could diversify and not rely solely on the dairy.

A non-paying guest at Curubanda Lodge

Soon after 2000, the farm began its transformation from working farm to working farm that welcomes guests. They built four guest rooms (the best is on the second floor, with a deck, an amazing view, and a bathtub big enough for two). They built a large restaurant, created trails for walking and for horseback riding, landscaped the grounds so that part of it looks more like a hotel than a farm, and are in the process of relocating the dairy barn so it’s not within smelling distance of the guest rooms. (Right now it’s quite close, but the smell isn’t unpleasant, just earthy.)

Agro-Eco-Tourism, complete with mud wallows

Wilberth calls the new project agro-eco-tourism. “It’s a radical change for us,” he says, and indeed it seems as if they are working out some kinks. The guest rooms could use screens on the windows and the water pressure means that the impressive tub takes over an hour to fill up. Guests are fed extremely well but there are no choices—you eat what they’re cooking, and many meals have rice and French fries on the same plate. A friend who came up to watch the sunset drove into a huge swampy hole in the driveway that  was hard to see in the dark and the rain, and upon later inspection that was just one of many tire-swallowing holes. In the Costa Rican manner, Wilbirth smiled and shrugged, as if to say, Who’d be dumb enough to drive into those holes?