Mexico adventures Pt1~ Oasis

Greetings Steemit~ This post will be about the beginning of our unplanned adventure across Mexico, where we get to put into play everything we had just been learning, experiencing and loving a totally new way to live outside our bubble!
In order to commence our trip though we were expected to come up with a plan for our parents to agree to. So we used a website called www.workaway.info that we learned about thanks to @apollomission, and on there we discovered amongst tons of opportunities, a beautiful permaculture ecovillage paradise project called Oasis, located in the middle of the Yucatan jungle.
Once everything was coordinated, we flew to in to Cancun, and rode a bus from the airport to the bus station to get ready to take a bus from Cancun to a small town named Ebula at around 11pm. However we did not realize there was an hour time difference in Cancun to the rest of Mexico which caused us to miss that bus and have to wait until the next day... We wanted to practice our newly acquired knowledge about sustainability but failed and bought some sandwiches at a local shop... however while we were eating our sandwiches, we found coconut trees! Followed by a big mango tree! So after our sandwiches I climbed the coconut trees and harvested about 7 coconuts, and then we went to the mango tree and the owner happily filled us a bag with about 40 mangoes! We were so excited and happy with the abundance that we went back to the same place we got our sandwiches, and asked them if they wanted to make a smoothie with us. So all together we opened the coconuts and peeled mangoes and made a bunch of delicious coconut mango smoothy! 😋 We intended to share with everyone, but the locals didn't find it sweet enough, so we had to drink all of it, and loved it!
Then we took our 2 remaining coconuts and our bags back to the bus station to sleep until the next bus came... That morning we were bored and since we had 2 coconuts left we decided to peel them.. by punching them! It took quite a while, but we succeeded in getting both coconuts de-husked just by punching them! That was the first and last time we've done that though haha 😅
These are the 2 coconuts we de-husked with punches in order to easily transport them on the bus to Ebula with us for super healthy food and water 💓

We arrived at the police station in Ebula where we asked for a man named Felipe, and his cousins that were police men took us to him. We waited for Shane, the founder of Oasis, to pick us up at Felipe's shop. While we waited we drank and ate our last coconut and offered to share but the locals preferred Pepsi and chips over coconut. Where we were it was hard to get signal and wifi, and whatever connection there was, was really really slow, so Shane would answer all of his emails and messages whenever he went to see Felipe. When he was done, we left the town and went into the 16 kilometers into the jungle where there was definitely no signal, and the only electricity we had was solar, though we didn't have a battery for it so it would stop working as soon as it got dark. On the way there we passed by a cave that had some massive tree roots growing down into it. We saw pure fun adventure and awesome climbing, though before we got there, he thought it was too dangerous. Once we got to Oasis he gave us a tour of the whole property before the sun went down, introduced us to the other volunteers, and we took a quick swim in the sky pool before the night got pitch dark. We already knew this experience was going to be amazing!

That's the sky pool, constantly refilling with deep fresh and really cold well water! The overfill would drip down, watering the garden effortlessly! We swam, bathed, and cooled off in here multiple times a day, every single day! Even though to get up there, you had to climb a wobbly ladder balancing on cinderblocks, while climbing passed THOUSANDS of thirsty African killer bees .. 😜 So it definitely wasn't a pool for everyone hehe, especially if you have bee allergies!

The next day Shane told me that since I like climbing trees, I would be going to town with him to harvest a bunch of fruits, and it was my pleasure to harvest so much abundance and inspiration in a single day. The first harvest we went for were coconuts, and that was the same day I learned how to get on top of the crown of a coconut tree because I needed to harvest way more than ever before. First we went to Felipe's neighbors house who had 2 coconut trees, one I climbed that wasn't too tall, and just before getting into the crown for my very first time, Shane passed me a machete to chop the bundles down meanwhile he used a long stick with a saw to chop bundles off of another tree that was harder to climb. Then after loading about 40 coconuts we got from there, we drove to another local mans house who had a much taller tree, about 40 feet, and the most loaded coconut tree I'd ever seen, there were even coconut sprouts growing at the top of the tree amongst all the other coconuts! So after climbing to the top, I had to knock down about 20-40 coconuts just to get on top and into the crown of the tree. Once I was up there, I found a birds nest with 2 eggs and I ate one, egg shell and everything, it was delicious! Then I knocked down about 180 coconuts! I would've gotten a few more, but I left about 5 coconuts on the tree because the owner of the property was extremely drunk and would get nervous and yell at me whenever I tried to get the last coconut off of certain bundles... It was confusing to hear him yell because usually I associate that with danger or potential danger, but he was just so drunk that he kept thinking I was going to fall out of the tree... After I got down Shane had gotten incredibly inspired to start climbing trees and loved the fact that he didn't need a climbing gym to get some awesome climbing while connecting to nature for free! Then Shane and I loaded all the coconuts on to the truck, and it looked like this;

This picture was actually taken later during the day when we were about to go back to our temporary new Oasis jungle home, after we had climbed and harvested a bunch of other fruits including mangoes, papaya, sapotes, and mamey! 😋

This is the biggest papaya we have ever seen with our own eyes to this day! And I've harvested hundreds and thousands of papayas all around the world!

Lucca made lots of delicious exotic vinegars!

One of the longterm volunteers from Estonia, now our good friend, decided to take 2 other volunteers and me to a beautiful sinkhole/cenote a few kilometers from Oasis, I decided to bring coconuts for some reason...

The water was unlike anything I'd bathed in before, you could open your eyes underwater and it felt healing on the eyes, and the deeper you went, the purer and clearer the water got, and more delicious to drink! 😍

Lucca didn't come with us this time, but just hang on until the part he goes in for his first time hehe.

Here's a better view..

Skip to about 45 seconds in the video... it's a lot higher than it might seem, we approximate it's about 25 meters or 80 feet, I recommend watching this crazy jump in full screen 😜

After he jumped Shane and I climbed a tree.. Shane jumped off and I got to the tippy top 😁 It was about the same height from where Lucca jumped from! I knocked down a couple of coconuts into the cenote, but a bunch of ants attacked me to get them hehe.

Next to the Oasis property there was a beautiful swamp with abandoned ruins of a Mayan pyramid and other structures and caves!

There were so many wild medicinal greens and fruits growing wildly all over the place by the swamp!

Deliciously healthy! 😋

Next to the swamp there was also an abandoned well..

Lots of frogs would fall in and get trapped, or be born inside the well and never get out their entire lives...

All those little sparkles are their eyes! 😳

Inside the cave we found lots of diversity of creatures and critters...

We don't even know what this thing is!
We had to be careful anytime in the jungle, you never know when you can run into something poisonous like this little scorpion!

It was harder to get pictures of the "work" or fun sustainable soulstainable productivity as we like to see it, but we want to share as much as we could digitally capture! 💓
We built garden beds, and planted and transplanted a tons of fruit trees, medicinal and edible greens, and vegetables!

We helped other volunteers with their longterm projects..

I was helping the volunteer that took us to the cenote create her rock art... but that rock was really heavy and I could only move it so far... Shane came to finish carrying it the rest of the way 😁

I was loving the new rock spiral massager!

And in case you are curious... This is the finished rock art project!

However this was actually done after we had already left Oasis.

Sometimes we would get inspired at night time, like when we went to collect 2 humongous parts of a trunk from the base of a majestic tree, which must have weighed about 100 kilograms or 220 pounds according to everyone's guesses.

We could only physically load 1 of them on to the truck though, we didn't expect it to be so difficult, even with 6 people.

The huge stump made a beautiful and really comfortable seat, bed, table and even massage table

"EAT WITH LOVE"

In Oasis my brother and I got inspired to try a fully raw food diet for as long as we could resist cravings. He lasted 5 days, and I lasted 7, it felt truly wonderful and easier for the body. We ate pretty much only fruits, green juices, leaves, some vegetables, and occasionally bugs, though I also had another bird egg from a different tree as well, still all raw though! As Italian pasta lovers, after that experience it was hard for us to turn down some pasta, especially a coconut milk cream, coconut cheese, coconut bacon, jungle greens and vegetable pasta 😅

Being all raw made eating and thinking about what to eat a lot less time consuming, and saved a lot of energy, however since we love delicious cuisine, after we broke our fast, Lucca became the Oasis chef for many of our dinners. We always try and use as much food we can possibly harvest directly from the environment around us to throw in to every meal!

Here Lucca is cooking on a new and improved outdoor rocket stove kitchen that 2 of the other volunteers built before they left.

I love having fun and hanging out in nature, especially trees..

I also love getting others to enjoy climbing trees too!

After we left, Shane had been climbing so many trees that he even went to hang from the same spot on the same tree as I did in that video! 💓

You can easily notice how different the tree is depending on the season!

Nature loves us back in its own mysterious way..

Lucca got stung on the eye by an African killer bee..

Lucca was the Oasis masseur, helping many relax and sleep better 😊

This is when Lucca got his first dreadlock from a fellow volunteer that wanted to give something back because he really appreciated the massages!

A heart came out of it unintentionally!

We also love making music!

My brother, Shane and I became such good friends and had so much fun together that he decided to take us to a couple secret cenotes he had discovered while living in Mexico so we could play! For efficiency purposes we decided to do this on a volunteer pick up day, so after we picked up the first 2 volunteers we went to the first cenote.

Then we went to the second cenote where we got to climb, jump, and swim even more!

After leaving the second cenote we picked up 2 more volunteers and went back to Oasis, they missed out!

Stargazing in this part of the world was incomparable to what we can (or technically, can't) see in a city!

This was our last night in Oasis..

On our last day we prepared to take some final group photos before our group separated..

Shane loved climbing trees so much that we had to climb a tree together for the picture!

An amazing experience, ending while a new one is simultaneously commencing!

On our way back to the town with fellow departing volunteers~

Almost every time we wanted to drive anywhere we would have to remove fallen/dead jungle wood..

Sometimes the Oasis jungle dogs Luna and Sancho would follow us, and if they chased us far enough, then they would get to tag along for the adventure 💓

Although we had no intentions of traveling around Mexico when we started this trip and were planning on heading back to Florida after leaving Oasis, we ended up getting convinced to try hitch hiking for our first time...

It was really fun and exciting! We never knew how easy it really was to hitch hike! Our friends were kind enough to make us a guide map of the safest parts of Mexico to be hitch hiking in since everyone has heard dangerous rumors about Mexico...

One of the volunteers was kind enough to help us start and join us on our first hitch hiking adventure to a town called Merida! (As well as taking and uploading a lot of these pictures for us to use in our post hehe thank you!)

These are the Facebook pages to Oasis, which is actually no longer existing the way you saw it in this post.. however, the second link is to Shane's new project which he is currently working on now incase you'd like to network with him!
https://www.facebook.com/Oasis-Eco-Village-Hostel-672605272763746/
https://www.facebook.com/santacatalinahostel