Memorandum from Dr. Laibow
January 30, 2008
As many of you know, as we’ve been traveling around the US and the world for health and freedom, we’ve been looking for places where we can demonstrate the benefits of natural solutions. We’re working with people in countries such as Thailand, India and several African countries on advanced natural remedies, increased farm production and similar projects. Along the way, we visited the famed Valley of the Ancients in Ecuador, where many inhabitants live to very old age and have explored the Vulcan Baru temperate forests of the Panama – Costa Rico border area. We’re hoping to find the right place to establish our ARC – our Advanced Renewal Community. This project will demonstrate natural solutions to food (better than organic), energy (off the grid) and health (a advanced wellness center) in an intentional community setting.
I have wonderful news for all of us! We found THE land, not just land, but THE land. Yesterday, I wrote a list of the things that we need the land to be:
High altitude
Cool micro climate
Decent access road
Water on the land which does not dry up
Never had pesticides or other chemicals on the land
Virgin soil with outstanding fertility
Astonishing, heart-lifting vistas
Neighbors who do not use pesticides to eliminate the possibility of drift
Borders on a National Forest to prevent development
Reasonable price
Secluded location
We have seen a number of places but none that met most, let alone all, of our requirements. Until today, that is! The land is verdant and full of wonderful, rich greens… a high altitude (4,000 to over 5,000 feet above rising sea level…) temperate forest with a very pleasant climate.
Here’s what happened last week: Our contractor/local guru Kenneth is back in town and has been helping us a great deal. He found a person with land who said that his cousin had land and showed us what the land would look like by taking us to the other side of the mountain range where his cousin’s land is located and asking if we liked what we saw. We loved it. It was high (at least 4000 feet), verdant and beautiful, so we said that we wanted to go see the actual finca (farm) the next day.
The next day was everything we could have imagined. Julio, the man with the cousin with the finca, met us in at the base of the access road to the finca and we got into a 4 wheel drive vehicle to make the climb. And climb we did! By the time we got to the base of the finca, we were at 4007 feet according to Steven’s altimeter. We changed 4 wheel drive trucks and went on up the first hill of the finca. It is spread over all or part of 5 mountains which are either pastures which have been used to graze cattle but never treated with herbicides (unlike the first piece we saw) or wooded areas of magnificent trees or, on a small protion, an organic coffee plantation. Backing it, at its rear boundary, is a Panamanian National Forest: no worries about development here. On the first flat area, there is a docile herd of bulls which really did not want to give us the right of way but the horn on the truck
convinced them to saunter off.
Moving along, we saw magnificent slopes and heard the gurgle of a river/stream. In the rainy season, it is a river. In the dry season, just beginning it is a considerable stream. It arises just above the land in a waterfall and falls down in more water falls to a steep gorge which it has created when it is in spate during the rainy season. The sound is lovely. It is crystal clear and, after we test it, I will be willing to kneel by its side and drink from if. After we test it. The potential for hydro-power is very real.
So we walked with the mountains and pastures at our left side and the river valley on our right. Across the river valley is another set of hills rising up with either trees or pastures on them. In one of the photos, when you look closely, you can see a horizontal line that might be a road. It is. It is about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way up the hill in front of you. That is the upper limit of the property on that hill but it goes to the top of the hill on the left and the one on the right. Again, the land is brilliant greens and not at all dry!
So we climbed up a short way again and found ourselves in the most magnificent grove of old growth trees on the side of the river. There are some coffee plants there which are organic. We learned today that coffee grown lower than a certain elevation gets fungi and pests and that is why it is fumigated and pesticide. Coffee at this elevation, however, is immune to these hazards and does not need to be sprayed with chemicals. Oh, a correction: there is a small amount of coffee plantation lower down which has been fumigated. We will tear it out. The flat area where the bulls were hanging out (about 7 hectares or 17.5 acres) is a great place for us to begin the organic + farm and farm school. The Panama Organic Growers are wonderful people and we expect to have a great cooperative relationship with them.
The grove could be almost anything and the sites for community and individual houses are varied and beautiful, allowing many different construction possibilities. There is ample sun, wind and, with the cooperation of the neighbors from whom we will buy the land (a very high possibility: more about that later), there is a huge hydraulic head which can power hydroelectric when the dry season reduces the flow of water in the river. There are also two springs that rise on the land and do not go dry, but they are rather scanty right now.
One of the mountains includes property on the other side of the ridge and, in fact, has a wide, flat area on the top. We were promised that the views would be astonishing.
We got back into the 4 wheel drive truck and headed off for a 10 minute ride. (There are two dimensions to time and space in Panama: everything is either 10 minutes or 2 kilometers. This was both. So off we went. However, the presence of a very big tree across the road meant that we had to get out and walk. The road would have been fine for a 4 wheel drive car. For us, it was easy walking but went up and up and up and up and up…. By the time we had been walking for at least 30 minutes, I had no more stamina to continue because I have not been at the top of my form physically with all the traveling we’ve had to do (I am fine, just tired) so I said that I would go back down while the others continued. You see, I knew what was up there. I had seen it in a dream that morning and had total certainty of what was up there. So the others went up and I went down and started to meditate. The result of that was very positive for me in the context of what we were considering: buying this land.
When Bert, leading the others, came down, he showed me the pictures he had taken of the vistas (I will mount them on forum when I can) and I was not surprised to see exactly what I had seen in my dream. That gets your notice. It sure got mine and, I dare say, Bert’s.
In a nut shell, the vistas are breathtaking. You can see Volcan Baru and its mountain range. You can see the Pacific Ocean. They are in different directions. Imagine what it is like. You can see the ranges of mountains as they march to the horizon. You can see the clouds and the blue sky. You can see to the end of the known world. And the air and light are truly magnificent.
The finca is owned by a young man named Carlos. When Kenneth said that Bert was a General and I was a doctor practicing Natural Medicine and that we were “concerned with developments in the US”, Carlos said, “They should be! The US is poisoning the air to poison the people to give the pharmaceutical companies more profit!” So he gets it I didn’t have to rant even a little bit!
He also, along with his mother, who owns the rest of the 300 Hectares from which our 100 hectares will be sold, is a land preservationist, conservationist and organic farmer. Nice neighbors. When he heard what we were doing, he got very interested and said that he would like to help in any way possible.
Incredible find. By the way, the elevation goes from 4007 to 5707 feet. The climate is eternal spring. The name of the area, Santa Clara, can be translated as Sacred Light…
Now for the nitty gritty: They offered the land to another group for $30,000 per hectare because they did not want to sell it to them! The price they are asking of us is $15,000 per Hectare but they may come down a bit more, maybe $12,000 per hectare or perhaps a little lower. The land will thus cost about $1.2 Million (or perhaps a bit less) and the infrastructure (roads, electric cables, internet cables, water pipes, etc.) is estimated very
roughly to cost about 3 to 4 Million (but could be somewhat less) The money we have to raise works this way: Stage 1: 10% of purchase price (approximately $120,000) Stage 2: Remaining 90% to purchase land Infrastructure can either be paid for by funds we raise or by loans from the bank once we own the land. We will be able to raise approximately 40% of the purchase price of the land as a loan. Clearly, it is better to self fund.
The way purchase is done here is as follows: we put up 10% of the agreed upon price (let us say we agree to $1.2 Million US). That means we put up $120,000 as earnest money. We tell them that we need, say 120 days to make our arrangements. During that time, according to the contract, we have the soil tested, the water tested, any borings for footings, etc., that we need, we make sure that the boundaries are as represented, we test the aquafer, we make sure that the title is clear, etc., etc. If everything checks out, then we are responsible to give them the rest of the money and the land is ours. If things do not check out, then we get our money back. If we fail to come up with the rest of the money, we either loose all of our deposit or half of it, depending on the contract. Obviously, we need to be serious about doing his if we put down the earnest money.
I need to hear from anyone who is interested in moving forward with this project. We are looking for an Angel or two and know that our Angel is out there, in cyberspace. There has been some excellent discussion during the week here in Panama of questions that we have not yet covered. Later I will try to post a summary of these discussions on the forum. If we are, in fact, interested in this project in a real way, we need to hammer out any questions we have and find the answers. We also need to commit to either financial capital in multiples of $50K Beneficial Interest Shares or social capital or a combination of both to allow us to buy this land, build its infrastructure and create the community we have talked about.
There is real time pressure on this. Americans and other people are crawling over this area to buy land before the value shoots up like Boquete, 30 minutes south of here (a town that has about 20% of its inhabitants from the US.
This really is, according to my best judgment, and Bert’s, a phenomenal opportunity. I hope you choose to make this your reality, too! If you want to be invited to join our NSF-Panama Yahoo!Group forum, please email me at dr.laibow@gmail.com and put “PANAMA” in the subject line.
Rima Laibow, MD
