Two days ago the Central American country of Costa Rica celebrated 189 years of independence. It was kind of a big deal.
And while we didn’t see any fireworks here in the little town of Bagaces, the people here proved that they do, without a doubt, know how to celebrate.
People lined the streets to watch a parade put on by school students of all ages. Some were dressed in beautiful (I’m assuming traditional?) clothes.
Don’t let all the jeans fool you – it was HOT outside.
I think the entire town showed up – lining the streets and even climbing trees to watch the parade.
Our friend Karla’s son played the drum.
Oh, the drums.
This isn’t your typical American high school marching band. This was something else. Something spectacular. The rhythm was palpable. And the energy of the players – even through the heat – was incredible. They jumped in the air, throwing the barrels behind their backs like it was nothing. It wasn’t just music. It was a dance. It was intense.
What I learned that day about this town is that the people here are really no different from any small community in the U.S. They love gathering for celebrations, and all of the related accoutrements: eating great food, listening to fun music, and of course, showing off their babies.
By the way, I really think Erin and I are finally starting to blend in.
Pinto, a world-travelling intern from Spain who’s been working here for approximately the past 5 years, always brings strange and wonderful fruits to work and offers to let us try them.
Meet Pinto.
Pinto is a wandering engineer who doesn’t believe in marriage and somehow always manages to get his food before anyone else when we go to our most frequented restaurant here in Bagaces.
And, like I said, Pinto is generous with fruit – fruit he buys from the local street vendors – fruit I’m always eager to try.
But I’ll admit – when I saw this sitting on my desk, I was a little skeptical. I mean – it looks more like a toy I’d buy for my dogs than something edible.
I had to look inside.
Oooh! What’s that? Some type of gummy, gooey, gelatinous substance. Like something out of Alien…
Costa Ricans call this a mamón chino, otherwise known as a rambutan (according to Wikipedia). This is the edible “meat” inside. Should I eat it?
Hells yeah I should. It was good. Tangy, sweet, and a really cool texture. The only thing I did not enjoy was the woody seed I managed to splinter in my mouth with my teeth – the seed I’m just now reading on Wikipedia is “mildly poisonous” when eaten raw.
Oops.
My mistake. This time. But next time? Next time I’ll be ready.
I want to whine about how I woke up this morning with my nose stuffed up, my chest congested and my eyeballs aching… yet again.
I want to piss and moan about how my pits are perennially gnarly, my upper lip is permanently sweat-stached, and how it seems entirely possible that my feet will be constantly covered in filth and muck forever and ever until the end of eternity, amen.
I want to wail and gnash my teeth about how I miss my husband and family and curling iron. I want to curse the gods for having to formulate complicated arrangements involving no less than three different modes of transportation a week in advance just to get to a grocery store to buy bread. I want to lie down and roll around on the ground while kicking and screaming about the unfairness of being sick nearly every single day of the three weeks we’ve been in Costa Rica.
And, normally, Iwould. Because that’s the kind of miserable, ungrateful person I am.
Seriously, have you met me?
But, today, I can’t seem to do it. Because, for the moment, I’m stopped dead in my tracks by all the unsympathetic beauty of the world around me.
And it’s making me remember that I’m lucky that I have a nose to get stuffy and pits to get gnarly and feet to get muddy and a husband, family and curling iron to miss.
And, for that, some small, rational part of me sends up thanks to the Great Whoever that I’m alive to experience all the loneliness and unfairness and crappiness of life.
And so, today, I think I will just shut up and smile.
I hate feeling tired at all, but especially when the view outside your window is persistently telling me to feel awake, alive and happy.
I hate that the first three sentences of this post start with the words, “I hate.”
Maybe it’s my newly-rejuvenated coffee dependency and the fact that I’ve only had one cup so far this morning.
Maybe it’s the fruity rum drinks, wine and cerveza from ladies’ night on the town.
Maybe it’s the 5 hours of sleep and the slap in the face when I looked in the mirror this morning and realized why – in fact – they call it beauty sleep, and why – in fact – this applies to me now that I’m 27.
Shit.
So what do I love this morning?
Strange, but I love that it was hard to breathe on our walk to work. Whether it’s from the large amounts of chile pepper fumes I inhaled while making hot sauce yesterday or never-dulling beauty of the view along the way, I don’t really care. I love it. I love it near tears.
I love how happy most of the people here are most of the time – even if we’re usually covered in mud, sweat, mosquito bites or any combination of the 3, it’s really difficult to be unhappy here.
I love that I made one of my favorite hot sauces yesterday with my own bare – actually gloved – hands. And am making another favorite today – one so garlicky that its aroma, one of my favorites in the world, just might cover up the musty smell from my clothes that never quite finished drying after the last wash.
No, I don’t have a photo of my clothes.
But I do have photos of the hot-sauce making process. Unfortunately, they’re on my camera. My camera is at Bec’s place.
I hate that I’m so forgetful.
Shit.
Apparently it’s going to be one of those days. Maybe I should just go get another damn cup of coffee.
So we had an interesting dinner experience the other night.
In an effort to save a little moolah and live more like the locals, we attempted to make rice and beans.
Well. I’m sure this is something that turns out absolutely delicious for those who eat it regularly and have actual… you know… seasonings in their kitchens. But I’ll spoil the ending to this little story by telling you that ours ended up tasting a little more like… um… how should I put this? Paper.
Our very first problem was that I felt it was imperative that I took a nap immediately when we got home. The “nap” turned into 3 hours, and I woke up at 5:00. So what? Even if it takes a couple of hours to cook, no big deal, right?
Wrong.
I first consulted Judy, our gracious host and excellent cook about how we should get started. She explained how she puts the whole onion inside the rice cooker (it actually roasts while the rice cooks so you can just squeeze the onion out of its outer layers of skin when it’s done), along with some diced pepper, garlic, and “other things” – other things we most certainly did not have. She was generous enough to give us several cloves of garlic and some celery leaves to throw on in, and luckily we already had an onion and red pepper.
She showed me how to sort through the beans and pick out anything that had split or any pieces of rock or cement that might have found its way into the bag during processing. (Which I’m told is pretty standard. You know, like bugs in your pasta. Oh we haven’t told you about that? It’s dee-lish.) Luckily, we had a pretty good bag. She then explained that they needed to sit in a pot of water for 2-3 hours to soften up prior to cooking.
Wha?!
That’s right, she informed my dumbfounded expression. 2-3 hours should do the trick. Ok, so that’s still not terrible – then maybe 20 minutes to cook and we can eat around 8:30, right?
Wrong again.
When I googled “how to cook dry black beans,” I learned that not only do you need to soak them for 2-3 hours, but the best way to cook them is at a low simmer for another 2 hours!
WTF. It’s beans. And rice. But apparently it takes longer than Coq au Vin to make without the delicious indulgence of all the fat and calories.
So I went back to Judy, tail between my legs. Um… may I please borrow your pressure cooker?
Sigh. She had to come back over and show us how to use it without burning our faces off, but this drastically reduced the cooking time and eliminated the need for soaking them. Just throw all our stuff in the pot, and a little while later, poof! Beans are cooked.
Meanwhile, the rice concoction smelled delicious.
By this point we were starving, so we threw it all into a bowl and hoped for the best.
And it actually looked halfway decent…
But the taste… Oh, the taste. How do I say this?
There wasn’t one.
In a true moment of ingenuity, Erin suggested we sprinkle it with our salty plantain chips, which proved to be a VAST improvement.
Next time (har-har) we will be investing in some seasonings. And I don’t think I ever want to try Judy’s rice and beans. I would probably cry.
I spent the next morning walking around the yard reassessing this whole “budget” situation and trying to figure out whether we could afford to live off of boxes of macaroni and cheese for the next two months.
When I realized there’s no possible way, I felt frustrated for a second.
But only a second.
Because it’s really difficult to stay frustrated on a morning when – even with bland beans still percolating in my stomach – the world outside my bedroom looks like this:
Today, Katie and I stuck our pale, bugbite-riddled city legs in the stirrups and went on a trail ride with our awesome new girlfriends Becca, Maria, and Wiebke.
We were thrilled at the chance to get to gallop freely through the Costa Rican pastures, feeling the wind in our hair, the sun on our skin and the extremely hard saddle under our butts.
The horses were maybe less thrilled.
Ok, and maybe Katie wasn’t exactly ‘thrilled’ either.
But I was. And this is my post, so I can remember it however I want. So, hah.
It turned out to be a truly fantastic day. At seemingly every bend in the trail, we’d come across something that made me so eternally grateful that I’d decided to grab my camera, after all.
Such somethings as this:
And this:
Just keep it movin’, sister.
And this adorable little guy…
whose large, less adorable mom arrived on the scene with a quickness. Fortunately, she ended up being a really good sport about us camera-stalking her child.
We even spotted capuchin monkeys!
There he is!
Ok, technically Weibke did all the spotting. I’m not entirely sure I would’ve known how to spot a capuchin (or even what a capuchin was) even if I’d had a pair of binoculars and a Spotting Capuchins for Dummies handbook.
In the end, we got to see some amazing things and no one was bucked, bitten or trampled.
Even Katie was a happy cowgirl.
It was a supremely fantastic day that we’ll remember for a long, long time to come.
Which is about the amount of time it’ll take us to walk normally again.
Okay. I haven’t taken the camera out much since we’ve been here, because:
a) It’s kind of hard to take pictures with sweat dripping into your eyes.
b) It’s kind of hard to take pictures when it’s raining outside.
c) It’s kind of hard to take pictures when you’re already late to work and sweat is dripping into your eyes.
d) Sometimes I like to see the world with my own eyes – sans sweat – before I try to capture any of it with a camera.
But yesterday our new boss asked me to take some photos of the farm – specifically black and white photos of chile peppers – that he can use for the company website and various marketing projects. I definitely need some more practice, but for me it’s really difficult to capture the beauty here in black and white. The color is the beauty.
So finally, for your viewing pleasure, you can see just a little of what Erin and I see every day.
This is part of the chile pepper patch, where they’re currently growing several different varieties of peppers:
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that in neglecting to take the camera out our first day here, I may have missed my only opportunity to get a clear shot of the volcanoes that serve as the backdrop of our little town. I can see them from the office window – WHEN they’re not obscured by clouds.
Here’s what it looks like on a clear day:
The peppers themselves are quite beautiful…
…as are their flowers before they bear fruit…
…as well as the rows in which they’ve been planted.
And while the peppers don’t look bad in black and white…
There’s nothing more vibrant in my world right now than a red hot chile pepper.
Well folks, as Katie mentioned earlier, we made it into Bagaces safe and sound despite our best efforts to get kidnapped and sold on the black market.
We showed up on our host family’s doorstep late Monday night exhausted, sweaty, and smelling like animals at the county fair. And, for some reason, they still let us in. Partly it’s because they’re the nicest people on Earth. And partly it’s because they knew we wouldn’t last an hour out in the Costa Rican wilderness on our own.
There seems to be a vast assortment of wildlife just waiting for a couple of clueless gringas like us to try to befriend it–and, considering my appalling lack of survival instincts, I probably would’ve been mauled by parakeets and lizards by the time I reached the end of their driveway.
Anyway, we’ve been extremely busy since we got here (hence the embarrassing lack of posts from me) getting to know our gracious host family, learning what we’ll be working on while we’re here, scoping out the area, settling into our super-sweet digs, and maintaining a code-red level of alertness for all potentially sting-y/bite-y things.
So busy, in fact, that we haven’t really had time to take any pictures. Gulp.
But we will. And toot-sweet. Promise.
In the meantime, you’ll have to settle for my first impression of Costa Rica, which is: It’s beautiful, humid, breathtaking, unpredictable, buggy, wild, quaint, laidback, green, quiet, noisy, and rugged.
And here Katie and I are, living all up in the mix.
On any given day, we see birds and volcanoes and horses and cows and huge thunderstorms and green fields and dogs and friendly locals in old pick-up trucks who wave and honk hello as they nearly run us off the narrow dirt roads. And that’s just on our mile-long walk to and from work.
Still, by far, the best commute than I’ve ever had.
On my way to quench my coffee addiction this morning (a habit on my list of things to kill before the big Costa Rica trip), I decided to stop over at the military hospital to get my second shot for Hep A and B. Ouch. (But I’d rather take 8 more of those in one arm – no, in my face – before I’d choose to subject myself to another Typhoid shot. That’s just the kind of baby I am.)
Frequent responsible and health-conscious travelers, how do you do it??
At least I got a hot pink band aid out of the deal.
(‘Scuse the image quality – that was taken with my phone.)
As the nurse drew the curtain closed and pinched my arm fat so she could administer the medicative juices, I started to consider the fact that there’s a lot of merit to just taking off one day with absolutely no initial research or preparations.
I read an online article over the weekend about a kid who did just that. He was fresh out of college and had been running a hospital shuttle bus for a few months, and then BAM! He saw an ad on Craigslist or something for a room for rent in Costa Rica and just decided to go for it.
No vaccinations, no Spanish-English dictionary, no trip insurance.
He brought just himself and a strong pair of cojones. And his brother. And his brother’s cojones, if you want to get technical. Okay and maybe he brought a toothbrush. And maybe he put that toothbrush in a backpack – but I’m guessing he didn’t try on a bunch of packs at the store and post questions on travel forums about the best way to carry his DSLR. That’s all I’m sayin’.
And I thought, how great would it be to have the guts to just go for it – don’t worry about professional courtesy of giving work notice, don’t worry about reading up on the history of the country, don’t worry about contracting potentially life-threatening blood borne pathogens – it’ll all work out in the end.
Right??!
But then I realized. I may not be much of a planner – I’m not good with itineraries or playbooks or remembering which day of the week it is – but I will always be a maximizer. (It’s a word I learned during an office retreat, so it must be real. And it must always be typed in bold font.) At any rate, I will always try to make an experience the best it can possibly be.
The maximizer in me knows that if I go into a trip like this without understanding anything about the local people or the ecology of the region, I’d spend so much time while I’m there trying to figure those out while not looking like an ignorant idiot that I’d forget how to just enjoy.
So I’ll deal with the shots. And the hot pink band aid. And the questions about what I’m going to do when I get back. The works.
And I’m bringing a damn dictionary.
And I think – I really think – it’ll be worth it in the end. And maybe my shoulders will thank me for doing a little research about the pack.
