Thursday, February 13, 2014

Cali to Pereira - Supposed to take 3 hours but took over 4 hours
Pereira to Cartago - Company Tax Cartago -3,000 COP (less than one hour)
Cartago to Guayabito Cauca (mayapurita farm) - taxi cost 25,000 COP but Krishna has the phone number of Carlos who will drive people for 14,000 COP or go to the vegetarian restaurant across the street from the Tax Cartago bust station that the Mayapurita Farm owns and they can help you arrange a taxi. 

Pereria to Medellin - Bus company Flota Occidental for 37,000 COP (20 USD) they said it would take 5.5 hours but took about 7 hours as there seemed to be a problem with the toilet and they stopped a few times for some repairs.  The bus was nice with lots of leg room, comfortable seats that recline back, bathroom, wifi and private tv screen.  The other option was a van that went from Pereira to Medellin and cost 32,000 COP though when we started walking to the other ticket counter the guy said he would give us a discount so it would be 30,000COP but we decided it was worth the extra money to go with the big air conditioned bus. 

Mayapurita Farm
Pros: An interesting hare krishna farm to visit.  They are very nice and could really use your help.  Krishna is really wonderful.  From what I hear the food is normally really good vegetarian food though the volunteers were not very happy when I was there cause things were a little bit off the normal schedule and the food was being cooked by volunteers not used to cooking for so many people so the food was not very good and from what I hear not enough.  It was very pretty cause its on a river and they have many good projects going there. 
Projects: 
recycling project to try to get the town to recycle their plastic by making eco bricks that they intend to use for building later. 
volunteer at the local school -they could really use the help.  The kids really seemed to enjoy the individual attention I was able to give them that the teacher when alone is not able to do.
Garden, composting (including worms),
Activities;  daily yoga in the afternoon, meditation and chanting and though they didnt do any while I was there they often do other workshops or films and discussion etc.  I was only there 6 days. Its on a river you can swim in and there is a pool down the road that you can pay a few thousand pesos to swim in. 
schedule: The volunteers mostly volunteer in the morning after breakfast which is served at 8am until lunch which is served around 1pm.  Then in the afternoon is normally yoga, maybe some light chores like helping cleaning up after lunch or watering plants at dusk etc, or other workshops or you can go to the school. The work was pretty easy.
Cons:  Overall I personally think I would prefer to go to one of the more developed ecoyoga villages as I think they might be a bit more developed for more learning. This one is just starting and while I think its a great opportunity for some I think I would have preferred one with more activities going on.  I am not sure if it was the season but there were so many mosquitos and it may have contributed to a very individualistic attitude where we went to read in our beds to be in our mosquito nets any free time we had.  From what I understand I was there during a stressful time so things were not as organized as normal, there were only 3 yoga classes of the 6 days I was there and not really many other activities.  Since I have never paid for any volunteer experience I think I had high expectations.  Its $12 a day and includes all food and bed. If you dont like large cockroaches or mosquitos this might not be the place for you,  the mosquitos would get in my net at night and since I tend to be allergic I tend to swell up and get too uncomfortable to sleep when I have too many bites.  Being allergic means I am somewhat used to being uncomfortable on farms but I think I have volunteered on enough farms that I did not really care to stay and endure getting attacked by mosquitos so I ended up leaving after 6 days. 


No comments:

Post a Comment