My Jungle-Fusion Culinary Experience

As I call New York City home, the contrast in way of life that I found on a visit to Pura Suerte was jarring. Delicately, serenely, greenly jarring. It required great effort to realize that in just a 5 hour's journey I could be back in the asphalt jungle, the mecca of commerce and chaos that is New York.

On several evenings during my stay at Pura Suerte I was off to a peaceful slumber in the palatial Stretch hut soon after a fresh and flavorful meal prepared in the new restaurant. My toucan alarm clock eased me into the day as I threw open the doors of my hut to practice yoga looking out over the lush jungle and its flitting post-dawn avian activities. Other mornings I found myself out for a walk around the finca before meeting my travel compadres for banana pancakes and freshly blended costa rican coffee. On our agenda: to decide if we would find our way to the beach for the day, hike down to Nuayaca Falls, or maybe spend time working on the farm.

But it was the quiet time spent in any hammock I could commandeer that brought me the true clarity and vision that is now helping me to knit together my daily life back in this huge U.S. city. The Tico way of life distilled each day with a necessity, peace, calm, frugality, simplicity, and respect for the natural resources that was so visible with every glance around the landscape. I now have had the chance to reflect on the choices I make day in and day out as I buy my lettuce from a New York City grocer or famer's market while fondly recalling picking it myself in the greenhouse next to the pineapple patch.

- Nora Martin