The Costa Rica Project

To start this entry, I would like you to know that I changed my flight from 11th November to 6th March without a budget for it and no idea how to survive these 4 months to come. I rarely fear the future and what to come because my mind is set to “everything will be alright” and so it will. But a small itchy fear of being in Central America – far away from Sweden – all by myself and without a income and so on scratched my head. I have just started to read very interesting articles and books like Steve Pavlinas webpage and the 4hourworkweek book and is being inspired and more aware of what I can do with myself and all situations and so on. I learned that to conquer my fear I need to know what it is, or at least it makes things much simpler. Said and done, I started to think and list my fears and realized that even though they were not that big, they could be completely eliminated and stop bothering me and I could easily make backup plans if those fears would become reality and therefore release them and continue with my adventurous life and start creating a sustainable and happy way of life.

This day, I have put a lot of time on studying myself and reading these articles and come to realize that I have some fears that I need to break and I have intended to do so. Approach unknown people, especially in the streets, is kind of intimidating when you ask them if you could take a photograph of them. And also to direct them and try to get that natural look or sometimes take a photo without the person is aware of it and having the risk of being seen and get weird looks or even angry reactions. What is a good way to approach this and how to communicate with other people and the environment? These are some thoughts I get and I will try out and work on. I have a great book “Within the Frame: the Journey of Photographic vision” by David Duchemin that helps me with this and inspire me in many ways but still, I need to try it in practice! So I hope that I can share these experiences with you and hopefully you will learn something from it and if not, just have a good laugh of the mistakes and failures that might come up but also the success I made, although I would like to say learning instead of failure.

Another fear of course is to be here far away from “home”, although I consider Planet Earth my home but at least far from more stable and secure environment. I felt that my fears would be to run out of cash and not being able to afford food, accommodations and transports and be stuck in that for a long time before going home. I easily solved that problem by making sure I have a backup home if everything crashes which is provided by my wonderful teacher Alexandra Fernandez here in San José and her husband Marco, thank you so much! And on top of that, I made a lot of friends around here that I think would help me out in case of emergency and to be a photographer and videographer today is really beneficial since I can live and eat cheap or for free at places and in return they get photos and videos. This has already worked 3 times, 1 for the spanish school and 2 for hostels for free staying. This is also a perfect way to have great contacts with the owners of these places for future work or just good contacts that can help you out or whatever.

I have thought a lot about past events and I have come to understand that as soon as I stop worrying and just go for it without any thought of how and if, doubt and trouble, that’s when everything just comes to me and falls into order and everything works out just perfect! I quit my job at an industry storage even though I was offered a full time job with pretty good salary for a 20 year old guy with only 1 year of experience in the work and after only 1 week after I quit I got a mail form a friend telling me that the TV show Big Brothers “boss”(that was a friend of here) had posted on Facebook that they needed an intern to operate a camera for 3 months. 1 day later I went there to meet here and they gave me just a quick tour and we talked shortly and they just said: This sounds good, you got it!

I did not except any salary at all but then they told me that I will get intern salary of 1000 euros/1500 dollars which was a fantastic surprise for me! This was 3 month of a lot of fun and good experience and it came just in time. I did not know what I would do until August (I quit 1st march) and I did not worry. I told everybody who doubted and asked me how I would make it or what to do that everything will solve itself and just by going with my gut feeling and take actions it turned out perfect! I wanted to go to Stockholm for a week right after quit my job and so I did. After 2 days in Stockholm I got the offer and the job was of course in Stockholm so I was at the perfect place to go to the meeting. Then my grandma just happened to have a friend who lived like 30minutes door to door with the job and had a room to rent out really cheap. Couldn’t go smoother than this!

So now, I just see bright on the future and I know everything will be alright and I have already got some responses from universe on this matter and I have no doubt this will be 4 months of great success, experience, love and happiness for me. I hope I can learn more on this topic and give more of my experiences and thoughts to you.

Let go of your fears and doors will open to a whole new world!

Yes! Finally after battling with slow internet the Week 8 Part 1 is finally up! But that was 2 weeks ago. Now we are in Ciudad Quesada and has painted a school so it looks very beautiful and happy! We have also helped the english teacher with the kids, correcting tests and helping them asking questions. We have played with them and they are so happy and full of joy and we feel almost like rockstars. They have an incredible amount of love and curiosity and I love to help them out to speak more english and they help me with the spanish, perfect combination! We are feeling honored to get this chance to help these kids and play with them and just have a good time!

The family is just great and so helpful and the food, Oh my goodness it is amazing! The mountains around here are gorgeous and I have promised myself to take a morning walk up and show you guys with video and photos how nice it is! The volcano here is covered with plants and trees and hasn’t been active in many hundred years so I think I’ll be alright! Enjoy the video from Cabo Blanco

Peace within and thanks for all support!

Hi everybody! I just started an account here because I wanted to have a place to share and talk to other travelers and this place seemed perfect. Although we are past halfway through our journey I would like to spread inspiration and excitement from our volunteer journey here in Costa Rica. We are making a documentary about being volunteer and travel through Costa Rica and I am also blogging on my own website and have videoblog on Youtube but since this seems like a good central for travelers that like this stuff, I think I can give some inspiration and maybe tips 'n tricks to you!

To see our previous videos, photos and posts, please visit www.marcusgrip.com and then "Blog" or this playlist (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF3230B8E9A27F17A&feature=viewall) from all the videos made so far. We are trying to make one video per week to upload.

So, a quick recap: We have been traveling to San José where we studied spanish for 3 weeks and worked the fourth week at an orphanage. Then Quepos, Manuel Antonio to meet a lot of nice people (backpackers place rocks!) and see the national park and the beautiful beaches. Then we went to Puntarenas were things got quite confusing so we did not ended up volunteer working but instead took some time to visit Montezuma and Santa Teresa to surf and have fun and explore and experience the nature and the beaches. Really hot over there, even though it is the most rainy part of the year! Then Cabo Blanco National Park for some volunteer work and it is between Montezuma and Santa Teresa, everything is very close and lies at the Gulf de Nicoya. Then we took a trip high up in the mountains to Monteverde where we worked a week in the National Reserve there which was really physically exhausting but really good workout and fun! You really felt you did something useful. And that weekend we went to La fortuna close to the Volcano Arenal and we were so lucky to see the whole volcano perfect with just some beautiful clouds, surrounding the top. At this time of year there is a lot of rain and clouds so we were lucky to see it in perfect conditions! And now we have arrived to Ciudad Quesada, a bigger city closer to San José and still up in the mountain.

I hope there will be some people finding this trip and our videos and photos interesting, inspiring and fun because that is our goal!

Here is some pictures to give you a little taste of what we have seen. Hope to see a lot of questions and responses