The Story
Equilibrio was conceived and built by Gabriela Prado and James Womack over many years with the help and support from friends, family, and an incredible local work crew.
Gabriela is from Buenos Aires, Argentina and James is from Princeton, N.J. They met halfway between: on the pacific coast of Costa Rica in 2000, where they fell in love and lived for a few years. In 2001 they moved to NYC, got married in the Shakespeare Gardens in Central Park, did translation work, studied yoga, wrote, ate a lot of bagels, etc…. They loved NYC, but after a few years they could hear the tropical muses calling.
In 2004 Gabriela and James moved from their small Manhattan loft to a goat farm in Nicaragua. Over many years they transformed that goat farm into Equilibrio. But that wasn’t their first big project in Nicaragua. Years before Equilibrio, they started the educational foundation Aprender in Salinas which opened the region’s first library in 2005 and has been running strong ever since.
Building Equilibrio’s retreat structures was an endless and exhilarating process in which aesthetics happily trumped practicality at virtually every turn. Gabriela and James played the roles of architects, designers, contractors, etc, in building every aspect of Equilibrio. They started with a clean slate and big ideas. It was only due to their power of imagination that anything like Equilibrio could ever have been built. There were set-backs and challenges and, sure, it took forever, but they managed to build exactly what they wanted to build: a unique haven for artists, yogis, and adventurers nestled in nature.
Equilibrio was designed and constructed as an expression of Gabriela and James’s beliefs in a healthy, creative lifestyle. Equilibrio’s philosophy is rooted in permaculture principles: working responsibly with nature, growing food organically, building in harmony with the environment, and being active in the local culture.
Come discover Equilibrio “the hidden paradise”, immerse yourself in nature, healthy-living, and creativity while soaking up the geographical and cultural beauty of Nicaragua’s Pacific coast.
