Plenitud: Wholeness in Las Marias, Puerto Rico

They assured me before I landed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, that yes, everyone would speak English and no, Puerto Rico did not want to be a country outside of the United States. So I came prepared with some vague notions of the Caribbean and a pair of shorts because in March, Puerto Rico had found summer. I was able to glimpse about three minutes of the capital before being shuffled into a car with my travel mates, during which we discovered Luis’ (our driver) vast knack for pidgin and none for English. We were headed to the Western region of Las Marias, Puerto Rico, a tropical enclave known for its lush waterfalls and novice farming initiatives.

I was in Las Marias through ten days last March for a service project involving organic farming, water conservation, and the trendy new field of ‘bio-construction.’  Actually, I had no idea what any of this involved, even while I appreciated the rainforest elevation and tiered hills on our two-hour drive to Las Marias. After the first few moments of sliding to each end of the van and exchanging awkward shoulder jabs with my neighbor, I managed to clamp myself to my seat and listen to Luis’ enthusiastic half-Spanish drift backwards. He repeated the words ‘china’ and ‘festival’, which led me to wonder whether there would be a Chinese celebration in the middle of Las Marias soon. ‘China’, as I later discovered, was the Puerto Rican word for ‘oranges’ – a funny little urban legend born from the initial misreading of a Chinese boat, delivering oranges. And indeed, Las Marias played host to an enormous orange festival later in the week, but more on that later.

On our way to the farm where we would be working at, for the next week, I saw three little boys huddled under a tree, each with an iPad in hand. Although not a country of great contradictions, the scene was representative of Puerto Rico’s charm; it was an island of relaxed discovery, people who had barely changed from how they were generations ago and yet at the cusp of modernity. Plenitud, our service farm, had a similar philosophy at hand: organic innovation.

Las Marias is the place to go, for a traveller who has no conception of where they could end up. It is not for the tourist, nor for the anti-tourist, but rather for someone looking to go on an adventure. ‘Plenitud’ translates roughly to ‘wholeness’, and that was how I felt through an exhausting week of construction. The farm was started by an environmental scientist couple, who hoped to establish several similar farms to encourage sustainable construction throughout Puerto Rico. Volunteers came to work, film, study, and learn. My group built organic structures, dug holes, planted vegetables, slept in tents, and helped the farm team cook our meals. Mornings on the farm were for yoga in the pagoda, and afternoons were for the much-celebrated Puerto Rican tradition of the siesta, or afternoon nap. I have perhaps never valued naps as much as I did after a morning of gravel digging and a heavy Central American meal of plantain soup.

While on the farm, I hiked down to a river stream at the bottom in order to go swimming in the cold water. Temperatures had stayed in the 30ºC range and the river was a blessing. Slipping over rocks, I made it only halfway in before one of the volunteers called me back and pointed at ash in the sky. The farm next door had set an entire crop on fire to create a quick, albeit dangerous, source of nutrients for their soil. I held my breath and retreated into a bamboo enclave on the other side of the farm. I wouldn’t have thought it in advance, but the secluded adventurism of Las Marias made it perfect for the kind of work being done in farms like Plenitud, which are all over the island. Puerto Rico has felt enough of the onslaught of deforestation and unsustainable harvesting to acknowledge their harms, but not enough to cause widespread indifference towards the possibility of environmental reconstruction. Having just come from a class on ecofeminism, which is a form of feminism emphasizing women’s connection to nature, I appreciated the practice of reimbursing the environment and efficiently using its products.

There was much to learn in Las Marias, Puerto Rico – from the land and from the people – and Plenitud existed in the service of knowledge. The bio-dome that we had set the gravel foundation for would eventually becoming a classroom for farmers in the area.  But Las Marias was also an incredibly picturesque spot for ecotourism, peppered with limestone forests for hiking. I visited one such rainforest with my service group and was told that the trails through the forest had naturally formed centuries ago and lasted into our decade. The area offered caving through limestone hills, ziplining to the Tanamá River, and rock climbing for more the adventurous types, but what I generally received from the experience was the aforementioned sense of wholeness. It is only slightly imaginable in retrospect: working to form forests and rivers and simultaneously being able to see what will come of that effort, and what has been lost.

Showering was not a Las Marian convenience, nor was Internet access. The point was to exist as closely with nature as possible. Puerto Ricans, at least in that area, had a solid handle on it. Our tour guide through the limestone forest described wanting to build a house next to his grandfather’s, only using wood from that very forest. Dancers who visited from the closest village came to demonstrate the ‘Momba’ and explained the ritualistic importance of dance in connecting with the land and organizing community. The local college threw a parade centered on environmental initiatives (and offered some great fermented juices in the process!). On some level, this was ecotourism and it resonated with the “organic” hyper trend running through Westernized parts of the world. But on deeper levels, the people of Las Marias did justice to the abstract notion of respecting one’s land.

Much of the area, I wandered alone, and found solace in the seats of the canopied forest. At the end of my stay, I visited the orange or ‘China’ festival and watched fireworks from the gates of a local Church. I also had my first non-vegetarian meal in eight days. The next morning, I packed up a horde of muddied clothes, along with a mug of bug ointment and multiple bottles of water, and made my way in the dark to a bus that would return me to San Juan. San Juan was an interlude in the city, and walks past cute rainbow colored shops. But Las Marias was something else altogether. With a van and perhaps $50, I was able to watch the sunset on Rincón beach and eat stewed poke on the seaside.

Although I was ready to leave by the time we left, because, really, I was very tired – but I left more satisfied than I had been in a long time.

(All photos courtesy my friend, Ryan S)

Monica Mohapatra

Monica Mohapatra, novice traveller, age 20 at your service! I'm from India, currently studying in Virginia (where I grew up). I'm majoring in Creative Writing and Women's Studies, with a minor in Art and hopefully all of these things come together to get me on a lot of trips in my future!