Golden Phoenix:

Where Rare Tropical Fruits Grow Among Towering Jungle Canopy



A spontaneous encounter in the Caribbean hills of Costa Rica, where rainforest and cultivation meet, and one man’s quiet metamorphosis becomes a sanctuary of rare flavours, grounded effort and a deep-rooted passion for learning through living.

‘It’s not really a farm, it’s just a bunch of fruit trees in the jungle.’ - David Durian Wizard Mccrackin


At the portal to Golden Phoenix, Diana stands wrapped in ember tones, symmetrical to the emblem beside her

5th March 2025

I met Durian David through my close childhood friend as we were embarking on a spontaneous side quest up the jungle road near her home. Somewhere in the in-between, just before the invisible gates of Golden Phoenix, the stillness was broken by the intense barking of a dog from a neighboring property. A flicker of chaos, like a test at the threshold. But as we reached the crest, the sound dissolved and the energy shifted. 

There, handpainted on a shield-shaped wooden canvas beside the entrance, was the Phoenix, rising from the ashes; not a fabricated insignia, but an intentional invocation. Here, far from the realities where symbols are loud yet have no soul, this one held meaning. It had presence. I could feel it. A portal had opened, and even though I had not met David yet, he already welcomed us in. 

As we entered and hiked up the path, David appeared from somewhere within the green, hair wild with soft static, eyes that felt alive with some internal joke; a kind of sideways humor you could feel more than name. It made me smile, I recognised the energy of a half-jester, half-gardener of worlds. There was no formal welcome, no exchange of names or small talk, just an immediate dive into the land. And that in itself told me everything.

At the very first sight of the Golden Phoenix sigil, I found myself instinctively reaching for my camera and began documenting. The video accompanying this story captures both the impromptu unfolding of that day’s journey and a separate occasion where I returned intentionally.


David showing me one of his grafted durian trees (and shout out to the grafting legend Joel)

Some fruits from David’s land

David next to his flowering 99 strain durian tree

David is not a tour guide in the conventional sense; he is more like a storyteller wandering through familiar chapters of his own living book. When we arrived, it did not feel like anything was beginning. David seemed already mid-journey, like a mycelial filament moving through his land, communing with each fruit and tree. We had not initiated a tour; we had simply entered his rhythm, and showed up to something long in motion. 

As I witnessed him pause in front of a plant, hands playfully clasped together, preparing to reveal to us his infamous stinky bean tree, I thought to myself,

“He’s a cool glitch.”

The kind that has ‘reality’ stumbling slightly, not enough to fall, just enough to mischievously reveal the dream.

David tends to over 500 fruit trees. While we were not able to meet every single one, we did get an in-depth glimpse into a few; some grafted, most grown from seed. Many of them bore fruit from Southeast Asia, such as: langsat, rambutan, durian, pandan, galangal. It was an immediate portal into the flavours of my childhood, the scents of the kitchens I grew up in. I could feel my mother’s presence, and the lands we left yet still carry deeply within us. 

David expressed to me:

“It’s a little embarrassing to be online because I don’t really have that much food. This isn’t much. Other people have way more fruit… More knowledge. I'm not so amazing like all these other places. But I guess it's good to get out of the bubble, cause if you don’t you won’t come across new things. I can answer messages on my duriantaipan Instagram.”

But as I stood there, surrounded by the diversity of trees and an intact jungle woven through his two-acre land, witnessing how his hands instinctively knew what each plant needed, all I could think was: This is everything. He did not learn from manuals or institutions, he learned from tending and listening to the land itself and from the advice and help of dear friends. Trial and error. And that is rare. In a world consumed with polished perfection and proof-of-concept, David’s approach reminds people that you can grow something real and powerful, without knowing everything first. An invitation to simply begin.

In much of contemporary society, our experience of fruit is one of convenience: sliced on a plate, bought in supermarkets, blended into smoothies, detached from its origin story. But every bite is the result of a long and patient becoming. David lives in that unseen space between seed and fruition. He has poured close to two decades of his life into this land, and nearly half of the 500 trees he has planted are still in their early stages, a testament to his level of dedication.

Within Golden Phoenix, you do not just see trees, you feel the time etched into them, the labour, the years of devotion that do not always yield harvest. Each tree is a living being with its own cycles and needs. This was not fruit laid out under fluorescent lights, wrapped in barcodes and stripped of story. This was a relationship between human and plant, and it is easy to forget that in a world designed to display fruit without roots. 

I waited until the end of the tour, when we returned to the Golden Phoenix gate, to finally ask:

 “What does the Phoenix symbol represent to you?”

In a voice note later that day, David expanded on his reply from the video, and added:

“The name suits the farm. It represents a reincarnation. I quit drinking eight years ago, and instead I started planting a whole bunch of new strains of really cool, really rare fruits, so it shifted my life and was a good rebirth of the farm.”

Golden Phoenix defies the usual idea of a farm. It is more of a living mosaic of rare tropical fruit trees spread across a hilly jungle landscape. For those who are travelling to, or are already in, the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, I highly recommend entering this portal and meeting its guardian. 

To contact David for his tours, please click here 

To support David and his land, please click here

Read more Golden Phoenix lore:

Solomon Of The Snake Path