Two travel and animal stories from Costa Rica by Madhuri and Chintan
Lands in Love Vegan Hotel and Animal Rescue: a little adventure
by Madhuri
Chintan and I left the tourist town of La Fortuna, Costa Rica, one morning, driving away into the unknown in search of a place to spend the next few weeks. We’d barely managed to find rooms the night before – everything was packed with tourists, the town had grown all over the place since Chintan had last seen it, eleven years before. We went in search of pastures new, worried that now, in the high season, we wouldn’t find anything.
The roads are often pretty bad in this rainy, jungly country, and I watched out on the right for the deep ditches that line the roads, as well as for sudden precipices with no guard rails – another common feature. We drove for an hour or so, until, along a green stretch all brimming with trees and vines and without any houses, there was a series of signs: Vegan Ice Cream! Vegan Restaurant! with paintings of happy dogs and cats. And Hebrew lettering too! Chintan said he remembered that place, and had stopped there long ago… (He is telling that part of the story below.) Then another sign: Lands in Love Hotel. Tierra Enamorada.
Wait! We were looking for a hotel! It’s so easy, when you’re driving, to get into a sort of hypnosis and just keep right on – but Chintan stopped up ahead and turned around, and we swung up a narrow road into the jungle… and drove, and drove, and drove – a long way down an intriguingly bosky asphalt lane with great vine-draped trees arching overhead in a tunnel. Eventually we saw someone walking a great clutch of dogs on leashes – and a sign that said Cats Crossing, with merry cats painted on it – and a double pond, one on each side of the road, with lots of ducks and geese disporting themselves about – and wondered, What is this place?
The lobby is enormous and open, with many conversational groups of sofas and chairs and coffee tables placed about, and a vast striped-and-white feline lay somnolent on a chair. We asked if there were rooms… and ended up booking to stay for 2 weeks. That was more than 10 days ago… and we have had such a nourishing visit! Of course we walked and explored, and discovered all the cat facilities – huge enclosure with an open yard with two climbing trees in it, plus a roofed area where each cat has its own little house, lovingly carpentered and painted with hearts and all sorts of feline-appropriate things (the entire hotel is decorated, everywhere, with murals, decoupage, flowers, etc – every room, every door-jamb, every chair, everything!)
There was a terrible temptation to do some adopting, which we resisted – I’ll let Chintan tell you why – but we were very happy to hear that around 250 animals per year are adopted out. This doesn’t keep up with the influx though – the local people, realising that here were animal lovers, began to drop their unwanted creatures off – usually in a cardboard box, just on the road into the property. There is one person whose job it is to find and catch them. (The animals, not their droppers.) The place also receives animals – including horses and goats – that have been abused, and nurses them lovingly back to health. On walks we found the beautiful airy horse-and-goat shelter, painted yellow, blue, and pink (one seldom sees the sun in this rainforest so these colours look really cheerful). The creatures were so sleek and healthy, and clean – we saw someone scrubbing a horse with a brush, a hose, bucket of soapy water. The horses especially had an air of old trauma about them, as if they were convalescing… and it was touching to see them in their large pasture or other areas, enclosed woodlands – just being horses, with nothing expected of them, no duties to perform for the humans.
There is a veterinary clinic on-site to treat the newcomers, and a special facility for special-needs animals. The huge cages are cleaned often and all the creatures look very healthy. I did feel though that each dog or cat wanted its own home to run, and was sad to be stuck in with so many others. Especially the cats… the dogs made so much noise it was hard to tell what they thought about anything! The ducks and geese seemed entirely happy in their duck-or-goose world, and there were bunny rabbits and guinea pigs in a big enclosure within the chicken one, which also had a few other birds in it, including a huge brown jungle turkey with one eye.
Our rooms were some distance from the main building, in a low annex comprising a long row of rooms with a covered porch lined with even more big healthy jungle plants in pots. Each room was painted with quirky flowers atop the yellow wall paint. There was a cave-like atmosphere due to there being just one window in the front and then a little one above the shower in the bathroom; and the all-pervasive damp added to this subterranean feel – but the young women who clean came every day and kept things as fresh as possible in this climate. It rains so often and so hard that the term ‘rainforest’ is seen to be very apt.
It was a luxury to sit down in the spacious restaurant and choose from the wide variety of vegan dishes. The cook – a beautiful ex-flight attendant of mature years – quickly befriended us and was very attentive and caring about what we might want or need. It is odd to see a menu which uses the words ‘meat’ and ‘cheese’ and ‘eggs’ and ‘chicken’ and ‘bacon’ and to know that every one of these items is actually a vegan concoction. For it is! They make the faux meat things right there on site. And I enjoyed daily fruit smoothies, and felt that the doses of papaya were doing me so much good – a fruit and also a medicine, I would say, that I always loved in India and which isn’t available in northern climes.
The cook, Naama, arranged that we would meet the owners in an evening get-together in the sitting area beside the restaurant. It was a lovely gathering, the hard-working cat / dog / horse / garden / housekeeping / kitchen / office / publicity / excursions overseers (there are many Costa Rican staff members) sitting with us and each sharing her or his story. One had come to Israel from Ukraine – one had a relative who’d been in the Indian parliament – one had been a lawyer and then a judge – one a house-cleaner – one vivid woman had been a dancer and choreographer. One of the men had travelled in India and been a reiki practitioner. They had all been friends for many years in Israel, bonded by their love for animals, and had been trying to find a way to live together with their pets. They encountered too many closed bureaucracies until they heard about Costa Rica. They never meant to run a hotel, but that’s what happened.
After the meeting we all had hugs – a thing we had of course been missing! I had told Naama about Osho Leela, and how we had meditations, dancing, and hugs there – and she said, “We don’t meditate here, but we do hug!”
The land seems to be huge – and I noticed signs of much care and husbanding in the attention to drainage and bridges and so on. We went on many jungle walks and discovered, down in a steep jungly valley, one of the most beautiful waterfalls I’ve ever seen, a narrow stream which then fanned out over one spectacular bulging rock face as high as a skyscraper. Hiking is a damp activity, and you can expect to arrive back at your room dripping.
There are lots of activities for guests: zip-lining, river-tubing, canopy tours, rappelling, hikes. And interested people can volunteer to help with the animals and will get free food, room, and their laundry done.
And of course, they are always keen for donations to help the never-ending flow of animals sidelined and often abused by human ways.
Kali Gata Lucero Brasilito
by Chintan
Now that’s quite an impressive moniker for a bedraggled half-dead abandoned feline discovered on the littered streets of Brasilito, Costa Rica. She was officially named by committee, following her rescue by my wife Nancy back in 2011.
Kali was an ugly mess of bruises, matted fur, and half a tail hanging by a thread. The vet snipped off the dangly bits, injected her with various potions, and advised us not to get attached.
It took about a week to love her back to life, fit her with harness and leash, and obtain a passport and airline passage to the USA. Our three-month Costa Rica odyssey on its last day took us on a tortuously winding road that afforded several opportunities to plunge into the abyss.
And then, there it was, a beacon of light; a roadside sign saying VEGAN ICE CREAM, SMOOTHIES — animals and humans welcome at LANDS IN LOVE.
We stopped, met a couple of Israeli ex-pats, feasted on vegan delights, enjoyed Kali’s free roaming of the small shop, and learned that this Lands in Love was designed to be a haven for us animal loving veggie people, but also a heaven on earth for abused, neglected animals. Following a delightful hour, we sped to the airport and returned to Amerikan life.
Many years of travel in and around the USA with Kali ensued. She delighted all. It was a wild sight, this strange little gata prancing along, leading the way.
Nancy became ill, underwent surgery and didn’t survive. For many years Kali and I enjoyed our odd couple existence, most of it on the road.
Last year she decided that American Van Life had run its course and off she went in search of a real home. With nothing keeping me tethered to Amerika I teamed up with my favorite poet and embarked on new travel adventures. Along the way I mentioned the glories of Costa Rica.
Did I remember Lands in Love? I think so. It was in the banks of memory along with all the other Costa Rican pleasures, but when Madhuri and I wandered onto that terrifying road, the memory of Love Land or something like that came front and center… and there it was, the very faded sign: LANDS IN LOVE!
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