The past 3 weekends I've been traveling a bit, so this weekend I'm staying in Heredia this weekend (and gladly). Here's a picture update of travels as of late. (Trip to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean, Osa Peninsula on the southern Pacific Coast, and Pacure in the Northern Caribbean).
Teatro Nacional, saw a Flamenco show from a Barcelona based company at the international arts festival a while back.
Maybe 4 or 5 weekends ago, I made Olla de Carne (beef stew) with my host mom. Basically, it has meat and every single starchy vegetable on the face of the planet in it. ( Potatoes, corn, yucca, tiquisque, plantains, another variation on a banana that i forget the name of, and then some not as carby veggies like different types of squash) Take that, Atkins.
Playa Manzanillo about twenty minutes from Puerto Viejo.
Eating dinner at Puerto Viejo at a Mediterranean / Thai restaurant.
Don't let the pretty colors fool you. These are fatal.
Punta Uva, Puerto Viejo. In the sand, you can see the snorkle gear that we rented for $5 for the day from a Rasta on the beach.
Pati pati, is what that's called I think. An old cow boy man was selling them on the beach. It's filled with carne with a bit of a kick and was quite tasty, still hot from the fryer.
In Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast. Every picture is worth a thousand words, or at least a few dozen. I call this photo, "F- the police."We rented bikes to bike to Punta Uva, a beach about 5 or 7 km away. I guess you should distrust any bike rental that charges you only $4 for a full day of bike usage. On the way back, toward 5 pm-ish when the sun was going down, Bonnie's bike chain broke. After looking pitiful with chain lagging sadly in the dust and covered in oil, we tried unsuccessfully to hitch rides back. (Although a few locals were super helpful in trying to repair the hopeless bike) (A police truck passed us TWICE while we tried to wave them down and didn't stop, hence the title, F the po po) Finally, a truck gave us a ride, but the bed was already full. Sooo, we rode back into town with a couple of tables, a bunch of plastic chairs, and two crappy bikes.
Kayaking in Osa Peninsula, the next weekend! This was off the shore of one of the coolest beaches I've ever seen. The waves didn't really break at all, they just kind of ebbed and flowed, and the water was so calm. It was sooo beautiful and this picture really doesn't do it justice, but we kayaked from the beach back to the mangrove during the sunset. This was one of the few/only times I worked up the nerve to take my camera out of the wet bag on the back of my kayak.
Osa Peninsula, view from the kayak.
In Osa Peninsula. 386 km=lots of hours, 8-9. The bus rides to and from Osa proved to be interesting. We left from the most sketchy station ever which houses one bus--goes from San Jose to Puerto Jiminez in Osa Peninsula. When we got there in the morning, there was some belligerent drunk man yelling the bus times and falling about. On the bus ride, I learned that I am truly passive aggressive through a open-window, close-window war I had with a rude diva and her spastic companion sitting in the seat in front of me. (I won.)
Big tree! in Osa Peninsula, Matapalo. We spent this whole weekend eating peanut butter and jelly to save us some moolah. Never thought I would be so sick of PB&J.
On the program trip to Pacuare, a turtle/conservation reserve on the northern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. There wasn't much to do around here because our main activity was at night, on turtle patrol. One of the guys working there seemed to notice that must of us were just sitting around and probably dehydrated due to the grumpy lady working in the kitchen ("This juice no for you!") so he cut us down "pipa." Similar to coconut, with clear sweet juice and white meaty fruity stuff on the inside.
Turtle eggies! They're round, globe shaped and sort of squishy (much more so than chicken eggs.) We got up close and personal with baulas aka leatherback turtles coming back to the beach to lay their eggs. These turtles are seriously huge, more than 5 feet long and a few feet wide. When they lay their eggs, they get into a trance, so we were able to be literally right behind, or right next to the turtles while they laid their eggs. (My friend Kristin was basically the turtle midwife for the first turtle we saw. The turtle picked a crappy spot to lay her eggs, so Kristin got to catch the eggs in a big bag to move them elsewhere. Translation: had her face in turtle vajayjay space.) It was like watching a prehistoric creature. Patrolling went anywhere from 8 pm to 4 am and one of the main reasons was to deter poachers, who sell the eggs for about double the price of a chicken egg because they're "aphrodisiacs." (These turtles have got a high risk of going extinct).
The beach at the Pacuare Reserve.
Riding on the boat through crocodile filled waters back to electricity
T-shirt design I made for our program t-shirt. Copyright, me.
Speaking of arroz y frijoles....Learned how to make gallo pinto this morning. About to go learn how to make potato picadillo from my host ma.
So far she's taught me how to make:
Arepas (like pancakes basically, except sweeter)
Chimichurri (like taboli but w/o the buckwheaty stuff)
Olla de Carne
Gallo Pinto
Need to learn:
Tortilla de queso
Tres Leches
Arroz con leche
Empanadas
Picadillo de Chayote
all the soups!
Hopefully I can make some tasty food for whoever wants to try it when I get back!
abrazos,
Erin
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