Jumanji Bungalows Costa Rica

Outdoor Magazine

This is the translation of the interview below.

Simone Julsing
¨Sometimes there´s an anteater walking on my rooftop.¨

Simone Julsing (27) has been living in Costa Rica for five years now. In the jungle, she and her husband make a living. In October it was her first time back in the Netherlands since two years, and we took the opportunity to ask her a few questions.

What do you do in Costa Rica?
I started out as a volunteer as a guide on a dolphin- and whale spotting boat. After I met my husband, we started a restaurant -he's a chef- and now we have a hotel and two bungalows in Drake Bay.

How did you end up in Costa Rica?
Twelve years ago I was here for the first time. Until that time I hadn't even heard of the country. A few years before that I met an American woman on a trip to the Bahama's, she had just started a business for herself in Costa Rica. The nature and landscape made such an impression that I was determined to go back sometime.

You were only fifteen years old then.
I am very lucky to have two world travelers as parents and they are very easy-going. "If you want to, you just got to go," they said. Eventually I left at 22, with the idea to stay one year, but I never left.

What is so special about Drake Bay?
Drake Bay is situated on the Peninsula the Osa, which is mostly covered in jungle and rainforest. You can only get there by 4wheeldrive or by boat, going through the biggest mangrove forest of Central America. The biggest part of the Osa is National Park and it's a Walhalla for outdoor people. National Geographic says it has the biggest biological diversity per square meter in the world.

And you live in the middle of this jungle?
Yes, in a remote part of the mountains. When we built our home there -the bungalows followed after that- there was absolutely nothing there. No electricity, no water, no bathroom. We slept in a house without doors and with a rooftop of plastic. We cooked on a camp fire and we lived with only candle light for over a year. We built everything ourselves: twining roofs, constructing pipelines for water supply and the road up there.

What creeps and crawls around your house?
I've got hummingbirds in my backyard and butterflies as big as two hands. Once in a while there's an anteater walking on my rooftop and sometimes we go crazy about the song of the toucans around here. Ofcourse there are monkeys and walking to the near village I've once encountered a puma.

What do you miss most about life in the Netherlands?
When I'm working in Costa Rica, it's likely to see a monkey passing by. That's when you realize that you're really a part of nature. In the Netherlands that's not the case. I can enjoy the adventure every day around here.

Outdoor Magazine, #8 2008

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