Now this is the love of the food.
Pura Vida, baby!
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How many ways can you make the morning fruit tray? Check out these five photos, from five consecutive days at the Korrigan Lodge!
Now this is the love of the food. Pura Vida, baby!
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December 30, 2016 Our last full day in Costa Rica. What to do? I woke up Friday morning about 4:30 surrounded by a pack of howler monkeys, closing in to meet back up after a night out. One must have been right above us because we could hear it grunting in between calls. Thinking again, it sounds maybe more like the grunts of the elephant seals along the California coast? But long and drawn out. As the sun rose and the jungle lightened up, I could see a tree shaking, out the window just behind our hut. Sure enough the howler “king” was right there, and as I watched and my eyes got more used to looking, I could see th band of monkeys moving into the trees around him. What to do today? Our last day here in “Paradise?” Let’s go beach! And it is right out the door and down the dirt road from us. Playa Punta Uva, where the black sand shifts into gold sand. An amazing and weird thing. South of us, the sand is gold; to the north it is black. here where it meets, it is black on top, but your footsteps break through to the heavier gold sand underneath. We put our towels out, laid back and napped and read. I went body surfing in the five foot breakers, and had a great time. After, I could simply jump into the cold, freshwater estuary to rinse off in the rushing current. Laying on my back, watching the white clouds swirl in an impossible blue sky, a V flock of pelicans soar overhead. A rustle: a tree shakes, and there is a monkey in a tree. Later, after a shower, I am in the hammock on our porch, drinking a beer. I just can’t get the "George George George of the jungle…” song out of my mind. We head into Puerto Viejo one last time. I have exactly ₡24,500 Colones left; no more, no less. We head to the E-Z BAr and Grill and order two pizzas and (after checking) four margaritas, for a total of ₡24,000 Colones. Nice. Now I have toll money for the trip to San Jose tomorrow, and we have a good meal (wood fire pizzas) and drinks, beachside, tonight. So, we sit and read and pass a few hours. We find out the water system is out in town, since yesterday. No toilets, showers, fresh water anything. They are washing dishes with sea water. This seems to be a small matter. In fact, we have noticed that the electricity is out every day, for minutes to hours. Another small concern. Speaking of the water, on this side of Costa Rica, you can’t drink the water. Our guest house provides us with filtered water and we have bottles. On the Pacific side, in Samara, we could use the tap water freely. I read and watch. I am struck at how this side of Costa is really “in” with the backpack crowd. Literally. Dual packs, front and back, wandering down the street. They need some help packing and dumping inessential things, I think to myself. Hell, my pack for two months in Europe is only as big as their front packs. And these are the “light and free” new hippies? As we drive tonight, I am thinking about how I would NEVER ever bring our little Mazda Miata here. Too many deep potholes. And that is when it hits me: we have not seen a single convertible since we have arrived in Costa Rica, over two weeks ago. Well, as usual it gets really dark, really fast. We head home to read and finish our half-bottle of wine. I print out our boarding passes. Tomorrow is a transit day; in 48 hours we will be back at work to pay for this all. December 29, 2016 I was up early again, thank god for the coffee Erwan leaves for me each night. It is interesting in the dark morning, even just on the short path to the eating hut and back. There are all sorts of “walking leaf” insects, and frog and bug sounds. Our little resident frog is usually in the sink or at least the bathroom, eating insects that manage to get in around the screen, and I might see our gecko. We hear him chirping all the time, somewhere up in the corners. We had no rain last night. Suddenly at 6:40 I could hear the heavy drop-sound crashing through the forest. The howler monkeys started groaning, then a minute later the rain was upon us, heavy heavy drops. It poured just enough to fill up all the puddles again, then passed over. Over breakfast we talked with the couple from Montreal, Canada. They are off today, as well as the couple from India. Ingrid and Erwan once again made the fruit into a different pattern; the pressure is on now to see if they can continue. We decided to walk the eight or ten kilometers into Puerto Viejo, the largest town around here until you get up to Limon. We thought we’d head in on the road, then return via the unbroken string of beaches lining the coast. Puerto Viejo is a colorful town of shops, hostels, bars and restaurants. It is famous for the Caribbean "Rastafari Culture." It is the proto-typical Rasta Town to fit your preconceived notions, in an easily palatable, touristica kind of way. The Gentle Caribbean, all dreadlocks and green-red-yellow, and Bob Marley; fun to sit and watch over a drink. Hell, I could even buy a Rasta knit cap with dreadlocks sewn on it, along with any manner of Costa-Pura Vida-Marley poster, sticker, key chain, or pipe in the sea side shacks or souvenir shops. Drugs freely available here, side by side with the pipas (coconuts) and bananas. Surprising to me, there are really no good deals here. Not like Mexico, things are expensive. Rooms (though you can get a hammock in the open air at a hostel for about $8) are not cheap, and the food and drinks are expensive for what you get with the exception of a few local sodas. Our first stop was at the north end of town, at the Bri-Bri Springs Brewery. They make craft beers. Gail had the Aurora Borealis Wheat Beer with watermelon (OK she said) while I had the Horizon Dry-Hopped Central American Pale Ale. It was surprisingly light. The Bri-Bri is right across the street from my favorite beach in this area, Playa Negro, or Black Beach. It is a long beach of fine fine black sand. My experience in Hawaii is that the black sand beaches are a little more coarse-grained; this sand is fine and soft, with gold flecks sparkling in the sun. The only two banks with an ATM are located here, so we got a little cash to last us till the end of the trip. There is a great little bar, “E-Z Times Bar and Grill," on the beach, in town, where we had a good margarita and decent pizza. We sat in the white plastic chairs and watched the Rasta World go by. Later, we headed down the beach towards home. At the south end of Playa Cocles, we stopped at La Casita Azul for a fantastic shrimp salad. The couple from Montreal told us about it. You have to see the photo, below. Really well done. Finally, as it got dark, we stopped about 2.5 km from home at the La Biela Restro-Bar. It is owned by a Portuguese Family, whose grandparents still have a restaurant in Lisboa. They made a mango-papaya daiquiri for Gail, and a sweet margarita for me. I had "Grandma’s recipe" shrimp pasta with wine sauce, and it was a generous helping of shrimp. We walked the rest of the way home on the pitch black road. It is weird how it is hot like summer, yet the days are so short here. Because we are ear the equator, the days vary from 11.5 to 12.5 hours in length. Right now the sun sets about 5:30, and by 5:40 it is black black out. Instant dark dark nights, like in winter at home. Too short of a “summer” day for me, the early evenings mean you go to sleep early and rise early at first light. On way back we heard crashing in the trees, high up. Shadowy Spider monkeys moving along, tree to tree, in the very top of the canopy. It was a ten mile day, round trip. (Manzanillo was an 8 mile day, just FYI.) December 28, 2016 Another night of interesting sounds, another morning waking to rain. My legs are still a bumpy mass of welts from the mosquitoes, it is like I have the measles from the knees down. A cool shower and hot coffee helped. Gail was up early, so we headed over to breakfast to see how the fruit plate was arranged today. The rain quit, and over breakfast we talked with the young Indian couple about their trip. He is from London, she is more recently from Philadelphia. They were two weeks in Panama, and just came over the border at Sixola for two weeks in Costa Rica. They were heading to the Jaguar Rescue Center about 4 km down the road and had a bus to catch. So, since we have a car, and they are interesting people, and we were having fun hanging out, we offered them a ride to the center and asked if we could tag along. And so that is how we spent the entire morning, guided around the Jaguar Rescue Center. They have two little baby jaguars, but really it is more of an every-animal rescue center, where they take in electrocuted sloths, broken-winged birds, and things like an ocelot that was hit in the head with a machete. I got to see a brain-damaged anteater wandering around from a distance, but got no photo of it. We discovered that it would probably be exciting to work at the wildlife rescue center for, ohhh… say ten minutes. But then how long really can you stand around guarding a brain damaged anteater as it sleeps? Or staring at little baby monkeys playing on a rope jungle gym? Or holding a little sloth while staring at another one sleeping in a tree. Cool facts: Sloths are mostly hair, so if you shaved one it is mostly sinew, bones and muscle. They are very aggressive and will bit and scratch you. The bite is worrisome because their teeth are green with bacteria. They have four stomachs, and go to the bathroom only once a week. The monkey types do not mix in the wild. They cannot let the women volunteers take the monkeys back into the wild after rehabilitation because they will be attacked for “mating purposes.” It is worse for a monkey to be missing a tail than missing an arm or a leg. They can adapt to a missing limb, but a missing tail is a death sentence. When a spider monkey pees, it goes on for over a minute (personal observation). You should not touch the frogs, especially if you have on bug spray or sun screen. We are more deadly to them than they are to us. Unless you touch a frog and then stick your fingers in your mouth. One kind of snake here has venom so powerful it will kill a cow in 40 minutes. Other snakes may take an hour or two to kill you. So, if you get bit by a snake here, call 911. They stock venom and a test kit at every clinic. You are tested and then given the correct anti-venom. We went into town to get cash at the ATM, and dropped our friends off so they could shop. Gail and I killed the rest of the day walking, going out to the beach, and reading. Today also we scored the perfect Trifecta of Toucan Greatness today when we saw a Chestnut-mandibled flying by, and then at the wildlife center a Collared Aracari with a broken wing, and finally the Keel-billed (Froot-Loops) toucan that flew in under the eave of a building and posed for us. Animals In The Wild At The Jaguar Rescue Center December 27, 2016 - Punta Uva Our hosts, Erwan and Ingrid, are both French. They have been here eleven years, and I wanted to find out why they, and so many other Europeans, have set up businesses and live here. So, over early morning coffee (breakfast starts at 7:30, but Erwan is out preparing it at 6:30, and has graciously left a coffee pot out for me so I can get up and make coffee any time I want) we talked. The short of it: He and Ingrid were engineers, but wanted a change. They felt it was easier to make the change here in Costa Rica, due to the friendly business climate. With two kids, aged 10 and 4, they have more time for family and life in general. During breakfast we heard a toucan, but I didn’t see it. A troop of white faced monkeys, Capuchin Monkeys, moved through the trees and posed up high, looking down at us. They swing and jump tree to tree like proper monkeys should. There is a loud crash as they land above us, raining leaves and sticks down on us. They tell us sloths abound here, so I am hopeful we will see on. But I may be out of luck on anteaters. In eleven years they have seen one. But I am looking. It is so humid that the empty envelope I use to hold receipts and business cards sticks itself shut. Nothing is ever totally dry. The towel gets mostly dry after hanging, and when you towel off after a shower you feel mostly dry, but a little sticky and damp. My hair feels chunky, which is nice in a way since I hardly have any. My camera quit working and I am reduced to just using my iPhone camera now. Erwan is pretty sure it is the humidity, which makes a lot electronics go on the fritz, and the guy from Montreal at the table next to us agrees. His camera quit as well. Erwan goes and gets me a bag of rice and a zip-lock, and so I have my camera on rice trying to get it to work. - OK, at this point I am going to skip ahead in the story, because I can. This is my blog and I can shift and shape time and events as I see fit. This is one of those times. As I write this it is actually Thursday, the 29 December. My camera came to life just briefly, but once again it is shut down. I still have it stored in the bag of rice, and I guess I will see if it starts to work again in the low humidity where we live. Erwan tells me that their cameras go out pretty regularly here, and that other guests have had the same problem. If you come here on a trip, it might be worth bringing a waterproof camera, or a backup, or bagging the camera in rice ahead of time. So far there has been no effect on my iPhone or MacBook. But the camera is a paperweight. - January 2 update: The camera is working again, after drying out for one day at home. I read a book long ago, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, who used the word “fecundity” in relation to the teeming life of a forest. That was the first time I had heard the term. I totally get it now. The rainforest here is swarming with life. There are plants growing off the flowers that are on the vies that hang off the trees that are in the middle of the forest, surrounded by flowering bushes. During the day, but even more at night, the air is filled with chirps and cheeps and squeaks and buzzing and croaking. You can just sit and watch it all moving, and there is so much more hidden from view. Giant grasshoppers, two or three inches long. Walking leaf insects, ants, spiders two inches across. Mosquitoes. I am not a mosquito person. I mean, I am not bait. At home, others get bit, not me. But here? My ankles alone have like fifty bites, up my legs, my forearms… I have sprayed on the heavy duty DEET and even rubbed it in. Gail the organic solutions girl, is using it as well. When it rains, it pours down, dumping loud and steady, enough to wake you at night. And this is a rain forest, so it rains every damn day. Rain crashing down. So loud it drowns out all the other noises. Loud splats on the huge flat leafed plants, drumming on the roof. It even drowns out the roar of the howler monkeys around us. The howler monkeys. So loud that they have given us ear plugs for night, but I think that is over kill, personally. I actually enjoy the sound, again it is just so different, but some people find it annoying. Think about the gorillas you have seen on TV. You know, they go “oo-oo-ahh-AHH-AHH!” So take out the “ahh-AHH” part and just make it a long “ooo” that gets louder, sort of like a 350 pound man getting up and out of the lazy boy, and you have the basic idea. But loud. It really echoes through the trees. Well, we had a great breakfast: real bread (finally) with honey or jam, eggs and bacon and sausage. Yogurt home made by Ingrid, with oats. A fruit plate (turns out it is arranged differently every morning. I told them I was going to take a photo each day, and so now the pressure is on!). And… Good strong coffee. Today the plan is to walk. We are heading south, walking to Manzanillo along the beach. The surf very high and angry, coming up into the trees along the beach, and we get hit by waves pretty regularly. At one point it starts to pour down on us, and so we shelter as best as we can under the trees, but still get soaked. At least it is warm. We end up wading across four big rivers that dump into the ocean. The water is knee deep or more, but with the surf pushing in and high tide, we wait, timing it so the wave is out. Then we run and splash our way across at the widest spot, lowest to the beach, before the next wave crashes in. We were mostly successful at this. Coconuts on the beach. The coastline disappears in the distance, due to the humidity haze. Palm trees and broad leafed trees… At one place I feel something in my hair, and I brush it out. OW! Goddamnitsonofabitchfuckingshit! and fifty other cuss words later, some of them I never strung together before, and I am holding my throbbing left hand. I have been stung twice in the soft spot between pinky and ring finger by some sort of a very angry black wasp. I mean, it really stings! My hand is on fire, but that subsides after an hour. Then it got warm, and pretty swollen, but that eased after a few hours. Jump ahead in time again, and here it is two days later and my hand is still a little stiff, and it itches like crazy. Turns out it was not a psychotic wasp, but the fearsome bullet ant. Check out this quote: "The sting of the Bullet ant is said to be the most painful of any sting and is compared to being hit by a bullet. In the Amazon the Bullet Ant is known as "Hormiga Veinticuatro" the 24 Hour Ant, because it's sting can last up to 24 hours. After being stung it was described as an immense pain, with "waves of burning”…" I am lucky to get away with just an hour of burning. And now I feel much better about my chances of surviving if I get shot, by the way. We made it to Manzanillo. People talk about it being “authentic” but for us it is not the place to stay (and we are glad to be in Punta Uva). It is kind of poor in a ramshackle, raggedy, sort of way, and with all the puddles and mud making it hard to get into the sodas, a couple sketchy bars, some trash here and there, we just didn’t really “feel” it. You know, it’s a fine line between “funky” and “trashy.” We stayed for a beer, but were the only people in the largest bar in town, so we didn’t really linger. We decided to walk the 4 km back along the road. We saw huge spiders, butterflies, some with blue tops and black bottoms. A group of howler monkeys were gathered high in a tree, and we looked at the “lot for sale” signs rusted out in front of patches of swampy land. When we returned we walked out to our little local beach, Playa Punta Uva, where big waves were rolling in. Near the point I saw a sloth up high in a tree, and while staring at that a toucan crossed by. My eye was drawn down to another, smaller tree where, by god, there was another sloth just about three meters off the ground. People were walking right under it, totally oblivious to it. We stayed and watched it a while, but as the sun set we hustled back to head out for dinner. We ended up at the El Refugio Grill, where we shared an excellent guacamole and home made chips. Gail had a fantastic fresh tuna steak, and I had steak done the Argentinian style which was just perfect and not at all “local food.” The wine was a decent Malbec from Argentina, and we even had a brownie and ice cream dessert. Flowers |
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