Question: Can you give some information about the new Yoga Monastery at the coast of Colombia?
Answer: We started a Yoga Monestary very close to Santa Marta, which situated in Bonda, in the Sierra Nevada. The devotees that are living there at the coast of Colombia, had a difficult time to visit our festivals for example in Bogota, due to the expensive and long journeys. Actually there are many temples along the Atlantic Coast of Colombia: in Santa Marta, Vaier Duper, Barraquilla, Cartagena, Cincelejo and Monteria.
With the help of Kesava Prabhu I was able to buy some land in the most beautiful mountain ranges of the world. All the devotees helped to build some traditional construction there. It is the land of the Cogis and Aruacos. And also, hunderts of years ago, some Indians, called the Tronas, used to live there. They had great skills of construction, and many boulder stairs, built maybe 500 years ago, lead through our farm. As we are cleaning the land, more and more of those wonderful staircases appear. And recently we inaugurated the temple of Mahaprabhu in this place. The devotees of the coast regularly hold large festivals there and they built the ashram in Cogi-style.
The temple itself is a little bit more modern and it is situated in the mango orchard. There are not so many devotees permanently living in the Yoga Monastery, but they are doing a very nice job. And Rasa Kirtan prabhu is working wonderfully to coordinate the activities on the coast. We just opened a restaurant in Santa Marta and there is also a Visnu Priya Asram, lead by mother Ajita, on the second floor of a nice building inside the town.
Preaching goes out far from here, to places such as Rio Acha and Maicao. Those places are very wild and only by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu's desire the Holy Names are reaching even there. If you have the opportunity and if you would like, please help this young Yoga Monestery or simply come, visit and stay with us for a while and you will surely discover another wonderful world; the world of dedication.