01x03 - Costa Rica

[bunniefuu]

- [birds singing]

- [insects chirping]

[wildlife buzzing and chirping]

[school bell ringing]

[man] Welcome to Casa Sula.

The way that they learn here, the kids,

they don't have classrooms

and they don't have blackboards.

[boy] You get to choose your destiny.

[Zac] I'm going back to school.

- But this one is different.

- [Darin] Whoa!

Darin, just enroll me

for a few semesters.

- Please?

- [Darin] I know.

[Zac] I didn't learn enough.

[Zac] In fact

Here, they don't have any tests,

they don't have any homework

[Zac] The main lesson here

Before you came to school here,

did you know any English?

I couldn't speak English.

[Zac] is question everything.

Dude. [Zac imitates expl*si*n]

[Zac] Because challenging old ideas

The problem is the solution.

is how we create

some of the best new ones.

We're deep in the jungles

of Central America.

[chuckles] This is my kind of sword.

Like

To see how a group

of people had a vision

What if your lawn was food?

to come together

[sputtering]

and think differently

about every aspect of their lives.

I took a stick, stuck it in the ground,

and then I had unlimited steamed greens.

[Zac] Creating a healthy, sustainable,

and unique community.

[all] Ahh!

[Zac] Very unique.

[blabbering]

[blabbering]

[blabbering]

[Zac] Oh, and also, monkeys.

Monkeys!

- See you, Darin.

- Wow, again?

[Zac] This is Costa Rica.

Oh!

[Zac] Let me start at the beginning.

A few years ago, I met Darin.

- Can't feel my feet or my hands.

- Proud of you, bro.

Yeah.

He's a guru of healthy living

and superfoods.

Yeah, it's great. Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

You could say he wrote the book

on the subject. Literally.

[Darin] A healthy lifestyle,

solid principles.

Darin and I are traveling around the world

to find some new perspectives

on some very old problems.

[Darin] That's Mother Earth, bro.

Searching for healthy, sustainable

living solutions for the planet

[Zac] Wow!

and all who live on it.

Woo-hoo!

Ignore the crazy white guy.

And, hey you gotta eat, too, right?

You don't have to eat it.

- How does it move like that?

- [woman] Oh, my God.

[Zac] It's time to get Down to Earth.

Trippy.

[bird singing]

[Zac] Costa Rica is a small country

in Central America.

It has an Atlantic Coast

and a Pacific Coast.

Their unofficial slogan is "Pura Vida,"

which translates to pure life.

And it has become an expat haven

for those seeking a purely beautiful

affordable

and tropical lifestyle.

So, dude, I had a big budget this episode.

I just decided to upgrade us.

[Darin laughing]

Ooh!

[Zac] Expats, or expatriates,

are non-natives who have permanently moved

to a new country.

There are an estimated 50,000 to 70,000

Americans living in Costa Rica,

and many more from other countries

all over the planet.

Darin is taking me to a community

here in Costa Rica

developed by a group of expats.

La Ecovilla is made up of 44 families

from 28 different countries,

all living in harmony,

with one common goal:

to live a healthy, sustainable,

harmonious life

together in this tropical paradise.

- This isn't a commune.

- Trippy.

This is a beautifully created

eco-village, fruit forest,

food forest place.

What if your lawn was food?

- You made it!

- [Zac] This is Darin's friend.

Long overdue.

[Darin] Boy!

[Zac] One of the leaders here

at La Ecovilla, Stephen Brooks.

Tell me you saw the jackfruit

on the way in. Tell me.

- I saw the jackfruit.

- Pumping. It's pumping.

[Darin] It's one of my favorite fruits

in the world.

- So, yeah, welcome, this is, uh

- Beautiful.

This is where Check out the longans.

- Not quite ripe, but probably can eat 'em.

- [Darin] Oh, yeah.

- [Zac] What's this?

- [Stephen] It's kind of like a rambutan.

[Darin] I used to get these dried.

[Stephen] Yep. They're delicious.

They're super healthy.

- [Zac] Mmm.

- Seed in the center.

- Cool.

- [Stephen] Mmm!

- So how long have you been out here?

- I've been here 24 years.

And we bought the land ten years ago

with the dream to create a whole other way

to do things, you know, like

- merge where we live with what we eat.

- [both] Yeah.

You know, it's like normally,

people live like in cities or in suburbs,

all clustered.

Then the food comes from far away

and gets shipped.

But there's no reason for it.

Food is beautiful.

Why wouldn't we wanna live

And then people have their lawns

and their flowers,

but food is beautiful, too.

We could have, for example,

check this out.

These are all mandarin limes.

- [Darin] Oh, yeah.

- That your lemonade are made from.

[Zac] Really?

- I mean, it makes total sense.

- Yeah.

I mean, it's beautiful.

And you can have flowers also.

Like, everything's basically food.

And, check it out.

It's so colorful and beautiful.

Ptth! Whoa, that was sour.

[Zac laughing]

It's not one or the other.

You know, it's not like either landscaping

or food. It could be both.

So, you know the difference

between annual and perennial food?

Annuals are things like tomatoes

or corn or hemp or rice or wheat.

They're things that you plant, they grow,

they fruit, they die, in one season.

Perennials are things that are constantly

in fruit every year, like trees.

Things that come from trees.

Avocados, cacao

uh oranges.

- [Zac] Those are all perennials?

- So breadfruit is like a potato

that you can make flour out of

and breads and tortillas,

that grows on a tree and it pumps.

- Wow.

- Yeah, it's a total Oh!

Look right there.

It's the very first ripe one, ever.

Oh, there we are. There's the cacao.

Should we go get it?

[Zac] Whoa. Yeah, please.

I've never seen a cacao, like

You never forget your first, my brother.

- [Zac laughing]

- [Darin] This is your first.

It'd be kind of hard to forget this.

[laughing]

- Oh, yeah!

- Ba-ba-ba-bong!

[Darin] That's it!

So you take the seed,

and a lot of people don't know,

- you can just suck on the seeds.

- You can suck. This is all sweet.

[Zac] This is cacao.

And in case you didn't know,

chocolate is made from cacao seeds.

Tasting it straight from the source

is a very different experience.

It's sweet, like fruit.

- [Darin] What real chocolate looks like.

- Amazing, right?

[Zac] This is crazy.

Isn't it amazing that chocolate is, like,

the most sacred thing,

and everybody's loving chocolate,

but most people have never even seen

where it comes from.

- People are just disconnected.

- Disconnected.

How are we that disconnected that

you don't know that chocolate is this?

- I don't know. That's a great question.

- That's pretty disconnected.

[upbeat drumming]

[Zac] I was honestly expecting

a small grass hut with a hammock.

But this

The entire house

is pretty much hand-sculpted.

is Stephen's house.

It's epic.

Oh, my God.

All the wood, literally,

like this floor is called cassia.

And then all these walls

are made from clay.

This is called wattle and daub.

It's an old technique from England,

so inside we brought bamboo

from our farm, Punta Mona.

You make like a lattice of bamboo

and then it has a finish with clay, lime.

Like, we take newspapers and make,

like, papier mache.

- Really?

- And it also has white flour.

[drumming continues]

You have kind of a personal relationship

with every single part of your house.

- Yeah.

- [Darin] It's all from here.

- [Stephen] Totally.

- [Darin] Yeah.

- Yeah.

- [all laughing]

[Zac] Every detail is centered

around the idea of sustainability:

using what is locally

or immediately available

to create the smallest possible

ecological footprint.

I mean, that's exactly like big picture,

is building your house out of

every single unique piece.

So like all these kitchen countertops

and stuff came from the Machuca River.

- Beautiful.

- A tree this high off the ground,

hanging by the river.

Yeah, that's called cenicero.

- You wanna see the communal garden?

- [Darin] Yes.

Let's do it.

[Stephen] This is the communal garden

and it's kind of like the center

of the community.

That's all arugula and radishes

and bok choy.

[Zac] One of the challenges in building

a community is that people create waste.

So where does that waste go?

Of course,

Stephen has thought of everything.

The problem is the solution.

So here in Ecovilla,

we installed a methane digester.

- [Zac] This is the methane digester.

- [Stephen laughing]

It's used to repurpose solid waste.

So, that's all methane.

The solids, a.k.a. poops,

settle in the concrete section below.

And that can be repurposed as fertilizer,

and the gaseous byproduct, methane,

is collected

in these giant balloon-like things.

This is the community fart bag.

- This is the community fart bag, yes.

- [Darin] Got it.

[Zac] The excess methane is burned off

and can be used

as an alternate heat or power source.

- [Zac] Wow! That's incredible.

- [Stephen] Amazing, right?

[Zac] That's so cool.

It looks like

It burns like the Olympic torch.

[Zac] So, how does the poo

turn into that much gas?

It's micro-organisms

that convert it into methane.

So as long as they're there,

they'll just eat it all.

- It's happening now in your stomach.

- That's what gas is.

It's microorganisms. You know,

we're made up of like millions

and millions of microorganisms.

It's happening now in your stomach.

- [Zac] You learn something new every day.

- [engine starts]

[upbeat Latin music]

[Darin] Whoa, whoa, whoa.

- You want us to fall, or

- Hold on!

[Zac laughing]

Da-da!

One of the most important aspects

of society

- [school bell ringing]

- is education.

Here at La Ecovilla,

the school is just as unique

and revolutionary as the rest of the area.

[Stephen] This is the school.

This is the new school, huh?

Yeah, it's amazing. It's a collaboration

between this group of teachers

and the parents from the community.

[Zac] This is Marcelo, another one

of the leaders here at La Ecovilla.

Welcome to Casa Sula.

[Zac] This doesn't look like any school

I've ever seen.

The way that they learn here,

everything that is around me

has a purpose why it's there.

[Zac] There are no specific division

of grades here.

We have kids

between the ages of three to 18.

[Zac] All of the students learn together.

It's sort of like the traditional method

of a one-room schoolhouse.

It's old school

with a new-school twist.

[Marcelo] In here,

they have all the materials

for them to learn by themselves,

in English and Spanish.

Every week,

there is a new exhibition about something.

Uh This week,

it's about grains around the world.

- [Zac] Clay? What are you making?

- Ah, a star!

They're not playing

with store-bought dough.

This is natural clay from the ground here.

It all fits the idea

of using what's available

in your natural surroundings.

And here, there's plenty

of resources all around you.

In here, they have a kitchen

with real knives.

They can come cut,

prepare what they want.

They make their own salads.

- [Zac] That's a real knife?

- Those are real knives.

And you have to see

how they handle them perfectly.

[Zac] Very carefully?

We've never had any accidents.

[Marcelo] She's doing the square root.

[Zac] That's insane.

- When'd you learn to do this?

- Like

- two years ago.

- [Zac] Two years ago?

So, before you came to school here,

did you know any English?

- [Zac] None?

- I couldn't speak English.

- [Zac] Wow.

- I knew Spanish and German

- Do you still speak German?

- Yes. Spanish, German, and English.

[Zac] Wow, that's pretty impressive.

Three languages?

And what's your name?

- Mila.

- Mila? Nice to meet you, I'm Zac.

Yeah, way to go.

[Marcelo] Fractions, trigonometry.

He's working right now with divisions.

Oh yeah, those are big numbers.

That's impressive. How old are you?

- Uh 11.

- [Zac] That's awesome.

[Marcelo] Oliver, you went

to a traditional school

before you came to Casa Sula.

[Oliver] Yeah.

A bunch of 'em.

[Darin] What's the difference?

Do you like this better?

Yeah.

No other school is like Sula.

- [Zac] Really?

- Yeah.

What's the best part about it?

That you get to choose your destiny.

How great is that?

[upbeat Latin music]

[Marcelo] They create most of their toys.

They design them, they build them.

That's pretty rad.

- [Darin] Yeah!

- [Zac] Woo!

[Zac] Going backwards!

[Darin] Ohh

[Darin laughing]

Darin, just enroll me for a few semesters.

- Please?

- [Darin] I know.

Here, they don't have any tests,

they don't have any homework.

[Zac] No homework?

- [Darin] Oh, my God.

- [Zac] Dude.

[imitates expl*si*n]

[upbeat Latin drumming]

[Zac] The next morning,

we're back on the bus for a six-hour drive

across the country to the east coast.

This is the Terraventuras jungle zipline.

These ziplines are

over a mile and a half in total.

[Darin] See you, Zac!

[Darin] See you!

[Zac] Whoa!

Wow!

[Zac] It's absolutely breathtaking.

From treetop to treetop,

flying about 260 feet in the air.

[Darin] Oh, this is a nut-cruncher, huh?

- [man 1] There we go.

- [Darin] Whee!

[Zac] And just like in life,

when one thing ends,

another begins.

[Zac] Pretty stoked.

[Zac] Yoo!

Hoo-hoo-hoo!

[Zac laughing]

Whoa, that one was awesome.

[Zac laughing]

That was pretty sick.

Whew!

Oh, are you guys all filming me?

Oh, great. Oh, hilarious.

Yeah, I do [laughing]

Is that flesh? [laughing]

[man 2] Right, Zac's on his way.

[Zac] Yeah, so ready.

[Zac] Woo!

Woo-hoo-hoo!

Ah! Whoa! [laughing]

[Zac laughing]

[Zac laughing]

[as sportscaster] Down the pipe,

and oh, look.

It looks like a smooth zip, and then

Oh! Oh! Ohh!

One more time, in super slow-mo.

[laughing] Whoo!

Now I know why we have a helmet.

- In this special zipline edition

- Epic!

of Ouch, My Head.

- Sure. Good thing that was there.

- Wow, yeah, I heard it. That was loud.

Whew!

Hashtag GoPro.

[Stephen] Pura vida.

So, how was the zipline, guys?

Dude, my life's better now.

It cleared up all the garbage,

all the gunk.

[Zac] The view from the jungle treetops

is unlike anything I've seen before.

[birds singing]

[Zac] As more of this untouched jungle

is destroyed by man,

the indigenous wildlife

is greatly displaced and harmed.

And that brings us here,

to the Jaguar Rescue Center.

They care for any

and all wild animals in need,

everything from deer to sloths

to my favorite animal, ocelots

Prettiest cat I've ever seen.

boars, and, of course

monkeys.

[Darin] So, when did you start this?

We started ten years ago, in 2008.

My husband and I,

we both were working in Europe.

I'm a biologist,

and my passion are primates.

And the passion of my husband

were snakes and reptiles.

So both meet each other

here in Costa Rica, actually.

And, well, we fell in love

and love for nature,

and then we decide to move here

and everybody knew about our jobs,

and everybody started to bring us animals.

My home was full of animals.

You know,

we were sloths in the bathroom,

monkeys in the bed and

and snakes under the house, and so

And one day, I say, "Honey,

I think we have a rescue center at home."

So, yeah, it started like that.

So that's what the universe

helped you choose, huh?

Yeah. Unfortunately,

he passed away two years ago.

- Oh, your husband.

- [Zac] Oh, I'm sorry.

[Darin] I'm sorry to hear that.

- This must be your extended family, then.

- [Encar] Yes.

[Zac] Walking through here, you can't help

but feel bad for all the animals

but happy that there are so many people

here to help.

Injured animals are first brought here

to the hospital,

where they are treated and,

if possible, released back into the wild.

- Is that an armadillo?

- Yes.

[Darin] Oh, my God.

[Encar] And a very rare one.

He's a very, very endangered animal,

that one.

It's a tail-naked armadillo.

[Darin] I think that's the saddest part

about, like,

you understand nature,

how nature sorts itself out.

But there's something about us,

in the modern world,

affecting so many animals.

- [Encar] Yeah.

- That, to me, is so sad.

Yeah, and if we keep doing that

and we don't change nothing,

they are gonna disappear.

- This is the outdoors for the monkeys?

- Yes.

[Zac] Yep, you heard right.

The moment we've all been waiting for.

Monkeys!

- Whoa!

- What a great job, huh?

[Zac] Holy cow!

[Encar] These are our monkeys

coming back home

- after a day

- [Darin chuckling]

at the forest.

She's Mika, he's Pache.

Pache, you want Mommy?

- Pache Santino.

- [Darin] Oh, my God.

[Encar] Animals need to choose

when they are ready.

We never force them to be wild again.

This animal came when it was very tiny,

tiny baby, it was just like 200 grams.

[Darin chuckling]

- And well

- [Darin] Oh, my gosh.

[Encar] And primates are very special.

- Hmm-hmm-hmm.

- [Zac] Look at his hands.

- [Encar] Yeah, howlers have big hands.

- [Zac] Yeah.

[Encar] Because, you know,

they walk on the branches,

so they need to grab

the branches like this.

And then they have a very special tail.

[Zac] Is it for grip?

[Encar] Yeah. For grip. But the end

is very important for them because

- [Zac] Like a finger?

- Yeah.

- [Darin] Wow.

- And you can

- [Darin chuckling] Oh-h*-h*.

- Like Yes.

So, over the years of you doing this,

what are the issues that you see now?

Well, more people means more houses,

more houses means more people

need electricity.

And more power lines, and

Now we have

much more cars than before.

So people is going faster

and using the main road.

So we have a lot more animals

hit by a car

- electrocuted by our power lines, and

- [Darin] Oh, wow.

It's why the center, when I start,

we start like with one animal a week,

or a couple of animals a week.

Now we have between two,

three animals per day, every day.

They fall down from the trees, and before

they were forests, and now they are roads.

And now, finally, we are gonna change

the cables and the transformers.

- Oh, you are?

- Yes, we raise money on our webpage

for change 15 transformers

in the next months, so

Wow.

[Zac] Knowing what great work

they do here,

it's impossible not to be affected.

[Darin] You know, we were talking,

and, as a crew, we wanna

gather together and raise some funds

for you to cover the lines.

- Wow, thank you. I very appreciate.

- Yeah.

- Thank you so much.

- Yeah, thank you for coming.

- Thank you for having us.

- Thank you.

- We're gonna come back soon.

- Thank you so much.

- For sure.

- Thank you for your donation. Amazing.

[Zac] It felt good to give what we could,

but they can always use more.

And the foundation continues

to welcome any and all donations

directly through their website.

Our last stop is just six miles east,

along the coast.

- [Darin] Look.

- [Zac] Jack Sparrow's boat.

[Darin] Jack Sparrow's boat.

[Zac] Is that new?

[Stephen] That's been there a bit.

They can't get it off.

- [Zac] Really?

- [Stephen] Yeah.

Doesn't look like they tried hard.

[Zac laughs]

Did the guy just walked to the beach,

see his boat, and just go, "Ohh"?

- "Damn."

- "sh**t."

"I didn't know the tide

was gonna be so low."

"Bummer."

- [Zac as pirate] Argh!

- [Darin] Argh!

[seabirds squawking]

[Zac] We're headed to Punta Mona,

a family-owned, off-the-grid farm

and educational retreat center.

So we just took off

from the end of the road, literally.

That was like the end of the road.

- [Stephen] Right there.

- It stops.

[Zac] You have to either take this boat

or hike an hour and a half?

Yeah. An hour and a half is brisk,

like, more like two and a half hours.

- [Darin] To get to your place?

- Yeah.

So, how'd you find this place?

So, when I was 21, I came on vacation

with my parents to Costa Rica,

and I watched a playground

full of indigenous children

get sprayed

by a banana crop duster.

These beautiful children,

their ancestors have been treating

the land like an extension of their body

for thousands of years,

and to even witness that,

it was like

Errh! Emergency brake on my life.

I wanted to see if there was

a better way to do things.

All it is is design.

Like, the banana plantations are just

unfair design.

It's unfair to the people,

unfair to the Earth.

- Unfair to the wildlife.

- [Darin] Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, not knowing anything,

I knew there had to be a better way.

And that's where Punta Mona came up.

- Amazing.

- [Zac] So much to think about.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- It's a lot.

- It's just like

- [Stephen] Yeah.

What, I mean,

that's ultimately what I hit.

Like, it's kind of how I got started

in all this.

I was like, "What's enough?"

I felt like I was just on a

- [Stephen] Treadmill.

- Yeah, I was on the treadmill.

It was like What am I doing? You know?

Now maybe you have a better idea.

[Zac] This is Stephen's dream.

And while it looks like a small island

in the middle of nowhere,

it's actually a point

on the Atlantic Coast of Costa Rica.

Look at our greeters!

[Stephen whistling loudly]

[Stephen] That's to let them know

we're here.

[Darin] My boat broke down

on the Amazon one time

[Stephen] Yeah.

- The Shipibo grabbed us out the boat

- What the [bleep] is this?

- and skipped us into the village.

- What's going on?

- Who cares about Shipibo people?

- So I'm hoping that's gonna happen again.

Bunch of girls coming out! There's, like,

a bunch of chicks, just walking out.

[Zac] Oh, some of them

are long-haired guys, though.

[all laughing]

[Zac] Like, three of them.

[Zac laughing]

- This is ridiculous, bro!

- [Darin] I know.

[all laughing]

Bye, real world.

[Zac] It's so easy to get distracted

by technology and electronics

in our everyday life.

- This is an escape from all that.

- [Stephen] Hello!

- [islanders] Hello!

- [Zac chuckling] What's up?

I've always loved getting out of the city

and disconnecting.

[whispering] What's going on, man?

[chuckling]

SOS!

[all laughing]

[insects buzzing and chirping]

[waves crashing gently]

[Zac] It is primitive here.

That's kind of the point of it.

But there's a lot

of unexpected creature comforts.

Like breakfast, for instance.

They go all out.

[Stephen] Hello!

[islanders] Hey!

- [Darin] Wow.

- [Stephen] We made it.

- Here we are. This is Punta Mona.

- Hello!

[Stephen] This is our kitchen.

The heart of everything.

All the magic happens here.

You got Carrie here making coconut milk.

Coconut milk,

you actually grind the coconut,

pour water over it,

and then squeeze out the milk.

[Darin] Whoa. I've never seen that before.

[Stephen] Every day,

every meal is a ritual.

Food is sacred.

There's this whole concept in America

of, like, fast food.

This is the opposite.

- This is Mmm, coconut.

- Cheers.

Coconut water. This is slow food.

You know, this is food that's

prepared with love and intention,

and not only prepared,

but grown and collected.

Oh, yeah!

Ohh!

- So good.

- Hey, what's my name, "Skip"?

- Really?

- Skip!

[Zac] I've never had,

like, warm coconut milk.

- [Stephen] So good.

- This thing smells like my favorite

[Darin sniffing]

I mean, it smells like durian.

- But it's not durian.

- Can I get a knife?

[Stephen] So this one's called cempedak.

Thanks, Suse.

Get ready, you guys, seriously.

[Darin] Oh, come on.

- So just take one of those little polyps.

- [Darin] Oh-h*-h*-h*.

It has a seed in the center, which you can

also eat boiled, which is high protein.

[Darin] Oh!

- [Darin] Oh, my God.

- [Stephen laughing]

[Darin] Oh, my

- God, that's good.

- [Stephen chuckling]

- [Zac] It tastes like meat.

- [Stephen] Mmm.

[Darin] Mmm.

- Amazing.

- [Darin] Doesn't taste like meat.

I don't know what's going on

in your mouth.

- [all laughing]

- [Darin] Game over.

[Stephen] Check out this jackfruit, guys.

[Darin] This is the biggest

fricking jackfruit.

This is what we call,

instead of permaculture, firmaculture.

- [as Arnold Scharzenegger] That's right.

- [Stephen laughing]

- Take it.

- Oh, yeah.

- Yeah, that's at least

- At least 50, 60, 70 pounds.

- It's my baby.

- Yeah, good. Finally, it's about time.

I mean, it's This is the Jackfruit's

the largest fruit that grows on a tree.

- Congratulations.

- Thank you.

- I'm so proud of her.

- It's a jack.

[Stephen] What's so amazing

is to eat food

that's grown literally 50 or 60 meters

away from where you're cooking it.

Think about, like, the invention

of the refrigerated truck, like,

transformed America.

In the old days,

people had to grow or store food

near where they lived.

[Zac] How come we don't have

all these fruits?

Because most of them wouldn't make it.

This barely made it from the farm to here.

It's the shelf life.

It's the reality of the shelf life.

So, what's with this conch shell?

Well, this is what we do to call the meal.

Let's do it.

[sputtering]

[conch blowing loudly]

[conch blowing loudly]

"News team, assemble!"

It's breakfast time.

[Zac laughing]

Come on, everybody!

We circle up.

[Zac] Oh, great.

[Zac] Yo.

Every day here at Punta Mona,

before lunch and dinner,

and today breakfast,

we make a circle like this

to just kind of stop and

You know, in life

we move and shake and run

and think and do.

Let's take all a deep breath together,

a big sigh!

[all] Ahh!

[Zac] Being grateful for the meal

which you're about to have

is not necessarily a religious thing.

It's just a solid approach to life.

And taking a little time to give thanks

throughout the day

is something we can all do more often.

Thank you.

Buen provecho!

[all] Buen provecho!

- [Darin] How about this presentation?

- Feels like real-life Survivor.

[chuckles] I know.

But we're the only cameras here.

[Zac] Over 150 medicinal plants are grown

here at Punta Mona.

And to help understand them better,

there are several workshops offered

in herbalism.

This is Sarah Wu, Punta Mona's

Manager of Botanical Studies.

So, I drink mate.

Have you heard of yerba mate?

- Mm-hmm.

- Absolutely.

I drink it instead of coffee,

you know, because adrenal fatigue

and adrenal stress,

they're a major issue,

and people drinking coffee all day long

is just making it worse.

You know,

and coffee's this amazing medicine,

and we can't demonize coffee.

But the rate that people drink it

- It slams the adrenal glands.

- It really stresses people out.

It makes it harder to recuperate

after illness.

And, instead of taxing the adrenals,

it's actually a cerebral stimulant,

and so it really helps with focus,

and you don't get that adrenal stress,

- like you do with coffee

- What's adrenal stress feel like?

Coffee jitters?

Sometimes it can feel like

burning the candle at both ends.

It's like you're exhausted

and you can't fall asleep.

- It's very energy-related.

- I feel like

I definitely know

what you're talking about,

and I get it a little too frequently.

- Are you a little cerebral?

- Then you reach for a coffee.

- Everyone's in this vicious cycle.

- A little cerebral?

I don't think it ever stops.

You know what you'd actually

be indicated with is passionflower.

It's for the racing mind.

So you've been doing this for 18 years.

What was your moment when you said,

like, "This is what I wanna do"?

I mean,

a lot of it was because of my own health.

- Right.

- You know.

Female reproductive things

and stemming from high school

and on, and not getting answers and

you know, doctors having

their limitations, just like I do.

You know, and what our understanding is.

And so it opened me up

to that I'm I'm more than

just like an organ in a body

that needs to be treated.

- [Darin] Right.

- A lot of it took me down

the path of nutrition

and the path of coming here.

I came to Punta Mona when I was 19,

studying tropical ecology.

And, um it awakened a lot of things.

Especially a connection with plants,

and then herbalism

kind of started to come naturally.

The thing about coming here

and meeting you

and Stephen and the crew, it's like,

wow, I've lost touch

with some of the educational side of it.

And that's what's kind of sparked

something back in me.

So I appreciate your dedication

to this side of it.

- Yeah.

- Because I think I've gotten imbalanced

in my own love of plants,

in the business side of it.

- But it's important too.

- That's a piece of it.

- So I wanna thank you for that.

- You're welcome.

So let's go around the farm

and see what we can get.

You know, a lot of times what we do is,

it's we call it "run down."

Whatever we run down,

and then we stew it in coconut milk.

- So today, let's see what we can find.

- [Darin] Coconut milk.

[Zac] The jungle here is loaded

with incredible superfoods.

They're everywhere.

For me, there was the gateway plant,

the plant that turned me on

to the magic of plants

and how they could improve your life.

So a friend of mine gave me

one cutting of this.

This is called chaya.

We come in here

and we just harvest all these tips.

Just a gentle swing of the machete.

We eat these leaves steamed,

so you can't eat them raw, though.

Careful, careful. See the milk on it?

It's a euphorbiaceae, and it'll burn you.

That's why you have to steam it.

But in a stir-fry it's one

of the most nutritional, amazing plants.

And I started with one little stick.

It grows from cutting, so I took a stick,

stuck it in the ground,

and then I had unlimited steamed greens.

It, like, radically changed my life.

It was the plant that got me into farming.

You're next, buddy.

- [Zac] Oh, yeah.

- [Darin] Don't lose a digit.

- [Zac] Like this?

- [Stephen] Yeah.

[Darin] Whack it.

- [Stephen] Yeah!

- Whoa, that thing works, man.

- [Stephen laughing] Nice.

- I've never held one.

[Darin] That a boy.

- I feel like nothing can stop me.

- Oh, yeah, that's a sharp one.

[all laughing]

[Stephen] Check out these bananas.

These bananas are ready.

And every banana plant only produces

one bunch of bananas.

So when they're ready,

we actually come in here

- and cut the whole plant down.

- [Zac] Whoa.

- [Zac] How come it only produces one

- That's just the way it is.

[Stephen] Nnn-nyah!

Has it always been like this?

It's always been As long as I know.

As long as I know, Simba.

[Zac] Really?

Then you come in here,

and then the rest of it is mulch.

So now this

it's taken to the kitchen

to be hung to ripen.

Careful, the sap of this

will stain your white shirt.

- [Zac] Will stain it? OK.

- Yeah.

Wow, it's heavy.

- [Darin] The next one will sprout.

- [Zac] This thing is dense, bro.

[Zac] In my backyard growing up,

I had a banana tree.

- We never knew to take the whole head off.

- Oh, you just would harvest the bananas?

Yeah, and then they would

never turn into bananas again.

- Is that what happened?

- You have to cut the whole thing down.

I gotta tell my dad about this,

immediately. He does not know.

We've been mistreating

our banana tree in the backyard.

Don't mistreat your bananas, Zac.

I didn't know you had to cut its head off

to be cool and nice.

Isn't if funny, you're mistreating it

by not cutting it down.

Yeah. It's the only thing I've ever heard

of where it wants you to cut its head off.

- [Stephen] Whoa!

- [Darin] Hey!

[laughing] Yeah.

[Stephen laughing]

This is a lot of food. Look at that.

Careful. Look at how much sap

is coming out. Look at that.

[Zac] Wow, that thing really goes.

[Zac] This area is full

of fruits and vegetables

that most of us have never heard of

let alone have had the opportunity to try.

I feel a sense of pride as I bring

our day's harvest back to the retreat,

even if it's just a bunch of bananas

and jackfruit.

It's a small gesture of my appreciation

to the group.

A thank you for the experience

and the hospitality I received here.

[oil sizzling]

A whole new outlook on life.

[Stephen] Let's do this!

The fruits of our labor.

[Darin] Oh, yeah.

[Zac] I'm not saying I'm gonna move

into the middle of the Costa Rican jungle,

but I might.

Da-da!

I am certainly taking some

of these ideas back home.

Thank you. Yeah.

Question everything.

Think differently

about, well, everything.

How you work

what you eat

how you learn

who you can be

what you want

versus what you actually need.

- This is all from here?

- [Sarah] Mm-hmm.

- [Zac] Wow. This is that jackfruit?

- [Stephen] Yeah.

[Zac] And remember

that change is totally up to you,

by challenging old ideas.

Next time I have a problem,

one that I can't seem to solve,

I'll try to remember that the problem

- [Stephen] Cheers, fellas.

- might just be the solution.

- [Zac laughing] Cheers.

- [Stephen] Yeah, cheers!

Oh, if I know all that's precious to me

Then the rest is just cake ♪

I'm not opposed to living in my van