When we travelled to Costa Rica we went toward the Pacific coast looking for Pachamama, a place for growing your self-awareness and experiencing a more spiritual lifestyle.
Pachamama was founded in 1999 by Tyohar and his travel friends with a deep passion for truth, meditation, silence and transformation.

Staying at Pachamama inspires personal spiritual exploration and living in harmony with mother Earth and all its elements. Since its establishment Pachamama has become a point of reference for people all around the world, creating a field of energy which is colourful and simply unique. It’s the ideal place for immersing yourself in a spiritual journey of transformation and physical rejuvenation while being in contact with nature and your inner soul.
Pachamama has been designed for challenging and embracing yourself. Here you can experience life completely, the energy of being together and the silent when staying alone. It’s a true temple of transformation.  
It wasn’t thought to become an ecovillage, but the desire for a healthier, natural and simple lifestyle has always been there. The adventure officially started in 2013 and the ecologic vision of Pachamama tries to embrace permaculture, cultivation of local organic products and living in a sustainable way.

The land is about 500 acres (2.300.000 square meters). Previously the area hosted a livestock business with no electricity, water system, roads and houses. After its establishment several families settled here and turned this place into a proper village with a school (obviously a Steiner school), waste recycle and compost areas, joinery workshop, sport grounds and guest areas.

Today the values on which Pachamama is  established are:

  • 100% organic food: the food that supplies the small shop and the restaurant is completely organic thanks to a partnership with local farmers in order to reduce the distance food has to travel and to support local farming. The restaurant is located at the centre of Pachamama, it’s surrounded by a thriving forest and 3 times a day a group of creative chefs prepares wholemeal vegetal dishes without using sugar, wheat, yeast (bread), coffee or highly processed food. Every meal offers a variety of raw and cooked dishes with beans, rice or local cereals.
    The dishes served here reflect the awareness that freshness, simplicity and love are the most important ingredients for a meal in harmony with nature and mankind. The restaurant is a living part of the purification process that people experience at Pachamama and it’s in line with the needs of the different working groups and the families that live here.           Next to the restaurant there is the “Wild Treats Cacao Bar” which is aligned with Pachamama’s philosophy of aware nutrition. The place offers tasty fresh beverages and raw snacks and desserts. The kitchen of the bar employs only local and fresh food. Everything is 100% natural, with no artificial food additives, colourants or chemical products. The main ingredients of the “wild cocktails” are the raw cocoa beans. Indeed, according to the pre-Columbian tradition, cocoa is not transformed, hence keeping its great nutritional benefits unchanged. Other “superfoods” are used for making sweets and smoothies, such as fresh coconuts, Maca roots, hemp seeds. Goji berries, bee pollen, etc.
  •  Reduction of waste: by eliminating disposable packaging, Pachamama is gradually getting rid of plastic bags at the shop. With respect to the future, the vision is putting into practice a zero-waste lifestyle.
  • Greywater Recycling: a new system has been installed at the restaurant in order to reuse greywater for irrigation. Water is filtered, purified and then put back into the system. The idea is to install the same devices also in other smaller buildings of Pachamama.
  • Compost: all around the village there are compost toilets. Food waste is composted and used for nourishing the ground so that thousands of local plants can grow stronger and luxuriant. They also experiment different techniques, such as worm culture and the production of biochar.

  • Education: it’s an integral part of the project for making a long-lasting change. Documentaries on sustainability are shown regularly, there are community presentations and people in a work-exchange program are greatly involved in the ongoing projects with the ECO team. Even children are involved: they have constructed synergistic vegetable gardens, flower gardens around the school and they are constantly taken for a walk in the wood by their teachers in order to learn water cycles, get to know the local animals and the development of different ecosystems. The village population is constantly growing and at the moment the children are 22. The surrounding environment is supporting their growth and learning process as the buildings and the paths reflect the needs of all different ages. The resident children attend school or the kindergarten in the morning. Both of them are inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s educational philosophy, so children are encouraged to grow and develop in a physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual way. The schools are increasing in the village in order to follow the growth of the children themselves.
  • Wellness: at Pachamama it is possible to attend programs on body cleanse, yoga, meditation, conscious breathing, Ayurveda and many others hosted by experts and professionals of different fields. We tried the “body cleanse program”: 5 days fasting with organic vegetable juices, acupuncture, conscious breathing, and much more! My comment? Surrounded by such a heavenly environment it was definitely a pleasure!!!