Hello traveller 🤎
How did two islanders end up in a granite ruin in the emptiest region of Portugal?
Honestly? We’re still asking ourselves 😂
So let me tell you everything. Grab a cup of something hot, because it’s a long road (with a lot of U-turns).
Two teenagers in Lisbon
I, Johanna, grew up in Guadeloupe. Kevin grew up in Switzerland. In 1999, both our fathers got transferred to Portugal for work, and we met at the French high school in Lisbon, and became a couple in 2002. Yes, that’s 25 years together. No, we don’t know how either 😅
After that, life took us everywhere. Aix-en-Provence for me, then Switzerland where I studies graphic design and joined Kevin while he finished his architecture studies. In 2008, we took a one-way ticket to Saint-Martin, a tiny island in the Caribbean.
We said four or five years, max.
We stayed fifteen.
Fifteen years in flip-flops
Saint-Martin was the sweet life. Scooter to work in a T-shirt, turquoise sea, barbecues on little islets with friends. Slow in the morning, and even slower in the afternoon.
Then Irma happened. In 2017, a huge hurricane wiped out the island. No water, no electricity, no news during days, weeks... And then covid came along and showed us the same thing a second time: on a 90 km² rock in the middle of the sea, everything comes by boat or by plane. Everything can tip over from one day to the next, and we are deeply dependant of the outside.
In 2020, after another long personal story, i met the spirit of cacao, and started to share her medicine in circles and ceremonies. This spirit, has brought us so much. Starting by buying a camper van !
In 2021, we bought Floki, our camper, and started spending our summers driving around Portugal. And every September, we came back to the island a little less attached. A golden routine under the sun. We could have stayed like that forever.
But I think our hearts had already moved out. We just hadn’t told them yet. Cacao spirit was planting seeds in our hearts since a moment.
The cabin I saw
March 2023. One cacao night (our couple ritual with this medicine), I closed my eyes and I saw it.
Two wooden cabins by the water. White curtains floating in the wind, on a warm afternoon. So much peace.
I wrote it all down in my notebook, and I even wrote where I’d put this cabin if I had to choose: the Alentejo, near Marvão, with the big rocks. Or Couteron, in Provence. (Places we know and which bring us peace and dreams for the future)
And then, one last line: We will find this place.
Remember that name, Couteron. It’s coming back 👀
The Boom (literally)
July 2023, new moon. We spent a week at the Boom Festival, Idanha-a-nova, Portugal, right in the centre of the country. Music, mud, dancing, tears, laughter, 40,000 people from all over the world.
It was a quantum leap for us. By the end of that week, we had decided to travel for a year with the kids. And the idea of leaving Saint-Martin had started to grow, without us even noticing.
So off we went. Winter in Morocco (New Year’s Eve in the Merzouga dunes, I’ll never forget it). Then all the way around the Mediterranean to Istanbul and on through Turkey. Göbekli Tepe was the goal. Almost 19,000 km in Floki, through 13 countries from 2021 to 2024.
On the road, we slept on farms a lot. And those people had understood everything! Olive oil, hens, homemade jams, a spring, a few solar panels.
We wanted the same thing. Seasons, soil, autonomy.
And everywhere we went, I prayed. A cacao bean in the sand of Merzouga, a candle in a tiny Greek chapel. Always the same question: Ancestors, show me which way?
In November 2024, we flew back to Saint-Martin one last time, to thank the island and say a proper goodbye.
The table called “Help”
Ok, we deciced. It will be Portugal. It was like a “return to source decision” regardless of our story. But where in Portugal?!
For weeks, we were completely lost. One day the coast, the next day the south, then the Alentejo, then the far north. There were even 24 crazy hours where we imagined ourselves living in Lisbon 😅
Airport nearby, big city nearby, French schools, mountain bike trails, but also surf, close to Kevin’s parents, not too touristy… Basically, total nonsense!
We even ended up making a table in Notion, with little ✅ and ❌ for every region 🤯
The table was called “Au secours”. Help in english.
Of course, the regions with the most points didn’t speak to us at all.
⏮️ Let’s rewind a little.
On all our road trips across France, we had one regular stop: Couteron. A small village in the Provençal countryside, where my grandfather bought a few hectares of forest a long time ago. I spent every summer of my childhood there with my cousins. A pine and oak forest, 300 olive trees, a little stone hut, and the Sainte-Victoire mountain in front.
Each time we stopped by, we left a bit dreamy, a bit nostalgic. And secretly, we both dreamed of something like it.
⬆️ North. ⬇️ South. ⬆️ North again. ➡️ East.
We were living at my in-laws’ near Lisbon at the time. After months without a place of our own (and different habits, and different rules…), one evening things blew up a bit 😓
Kevin packed everything into Floki that same night. The next morning, we left. Looking for a home, with no idea which direction to take.
The “Help” table said north. So north it was, to Tomar, the Templar town we love. Back at the camper after dinner, Kevin suddenly goes pale: we had completely forgotten an appointment at the embassy in Lisbon, booked months in advance 🤯
So, back south. Through the edge of the Alentejo, with its oaks and olive trees. We’d forgotten how much that energy felt like us.
Swiss efficiency: 30 minutes and the paperwork was done. North again!
This time along the wild Zêzere river. Nope. Too isolated, and way too many forests ready to burn.
Lost again, we needed a spot for the night. Why not where we slept before the Boom, in 2023? Castelo Branco.
New moon of December 2024. Kevin found the parking spot without GPS. Like the road home. And the Serra da Estrela was all snowy at the top, with a perfect sunset.
Oaks. Olive trees (hmm, that reminds me of something). A mountain. Mystical rocks.
Our hearts each went BOOM, secretly ⚡
“You. There you are.”
Kevin grabbed his phone and did what he’d been doing for weeks: property listings. This time around Castelo Branco. And one photo summed up everything we were looking for.
Meaning not a wooden tiny house in the forest at all 😂
But a stone house. Just like the little hut in Couteron. We sent an email. The next morning, a reply from a certain Maria, with the name of a different agency in her signature 🧐 We walked into her tiny office in Castelo Branco (again?!), introduced ourselves in Portuguese… and she answered us in perfect French. oowwkaayy 🤷🏻♀️
She pulled out a few printed listings.
And one of them.
The moment she put that sheet in front of us:
Oh wow. That’s the one.
You. There you are.
Shh. Don’t show anything. Act normal.
BOOM, for both of us. Except we didn’t tell each other right away.
When we got to the land, you could barely see anything. Brambles everywhere, two or three metres high. Only one of the two wells was even visible. But when I walked into the ruin, I couldn’t hold back. Through the weeds and the broken tiles, the house showed me everything it could become.
And I was hooked. Instantly.
For days, neither of us said a word. Until we finally confessed.
Kevin: “But I fell for it the second she put the sheet on the desk!!” 🫠
We made an offer at the end of December 2024.
4 months of waiting (and a tarot card)
And then… nothing. Offers refused. Emails that took forever. Everything in slow motion. We knew it was this house. So why wasn’t it flowing?!
One morning in March, 5:30 am, I couldn’t sleep. I pulled a tarot card. What do you have to tell me, little house?
The Hierophant. An old man surrounded by his stone structure, a low mountain in the background (the same view as from the ruin!), and two keys. The keys of a door. The keys of a new home.
A few weeks later, everything started moving. We signed at the notary on 27 March 2025. And on 29 March, a new moon, we slept on our land for the first time in Floki, our van.
A Portuguese Couteron
It’s only later, one candlelit evening, that it hit us both.
The universe had just served us, on a plate, an exact copy of my grandfather’s land.
A forest of pines and cork oaks. About fifty olive trees, around 100 or more years old. A granite house with the same age. Two wells, a spring nearby. And the Serra da Gardunha in front, part of the Serra da Estrela.
Oh, and one more thing. My grandfather called his land Lou Rouve, “the oak” in old Provençal, because of the huge ancestor oak at its centre. The master of the place.
On our land, one cork oak is bigger than all the others.
The land decides
When you arrive somewhere, you introduce yourself. So before touching anything, I left offerings on a big granite rock: bread, milk, honey, wine and a letter I wrote to the spirits of the place. Then I walked the whole land with my drum.
→ You can listen to this ritual on Insight Timer and walk beside me.
And then… we got humbled 😅 Floki broke down, and while we were stuck far away, the three big eucalyptus at the entrance were cut down. We’d changed our minds about them. We just hadn’t told the company in time.
Kevin: “I bet the guy comes to cut the trees while we’re away.”
Me: “Noooo, he won’t come anymore, trust me.”
But he came.
I walked the land in tears, saying sorry, sorry, sorry. Then I went back with my drum to thank the trees. And two messages came through. Make a new beater for your drum from one of my branches. And: The oak must remain the master. (because eucalyptus were huge and dangerously placed for the house).
Five days later, the stumps were covered in butterflies and beetles drinking the sap. And from there, everything opened. A builder who actually answered his emails contacted us back (after weeks of searching for someone to start rebuilding), and my mum even found her own little stone house 20 minutes away from us.
Mama Cacao came back
For three years, I’d been going through a long and pretty uncomfortable shedding. Starting from the moment we decided to travel, until the moment the house was finished renovating. I couldn’t even prepare cacao anymore. I thought she’d left me. I almost let her go.
Then, one morning, I made two cups. One for me, one for Kevin. I wanted to cry. Then we laughed.
She’s the one who put us on these roads in the first place, this medicine is my tool for people to re-connect and feel alive, it is my anchor and my compass. I finally felt stable and ready to share it again in groups, on our land, as i used to do in the caribbean.
And now, Quinta KAKAW
A few weeks ago, while preparing the spot for our bell tent (for cacao journeys and events) under the oaks, we found a scorpion sleeping under the stones we had placed at its centre. A guardian. The tent got its name that day: The Scorpio Tent.
Couteron has become Quinta KAKAW. Soon, journeys with ceremonial cacao, drum sessions and worshops will be held in The Scorpio Tent. The Slow Cabin is on its way (yes, the cabin from that cacao night, it’s coming 🤎). The Nomad Anchor, for vans and slow travellers. And Floki, ready to take you on the roads of the Beira Baixa.
→ Everything is listed on our service page: Stay, Gather & Journey.
We were looking for a wooden cabin on flat land. We got a ruin, a master oak, a scorpion, two wells full of brambles, and a whole new life.
Not at all what we had planned.
… Or maybe it was?
So tell me. What if what you’re looking for is looking for you too? 🌀
Tell us in the comments, or just hit reply.
Até já 🪶
Johanna & Kevin
Life lately at the Quinta
🎧 Our meditations, cacao songs and drum journeys are free on Insight Timer.
📸 Daily life on the land : Instagram @quinta.kakaw
💬 Events at the Quinta are announced first in our WhatsApp group