Comida Tipica

Tom and I were in Costa Rica in 1995, and we remembered the food as being bland and uninspired. It still is, only now it costs twice as much. Tom recently said that comida tipica (the term for traditional CR food) should actually be called ‘comida sin sabor”.

We’ve pretty much given up the quest for tasty food and are just trying to eat as healthily as possible, which is enough of a challenge. Sticking to our low-fat vegan diet is simply impossible. Tico food centers around meat and cheese, with generous sides of white rice, white bread, and potatoes. A veritable diabetic nightmare. They know about vegetarianism, but not veganism, and would probably consider it a form of mental illness.

What they lack in quality, they make up for with quantity. I thought restaurants in America served ridiculously large portions, but the quantity of meat on the plate here is simply staggering. This heavy meat diet is probably one of the reasons Ticos are so heavy-set. In most of the places I’ve traveled, the locals are normal sized, and the tourists are great lumbering walrus people. There is no such distinction here.

We had a dinner in La Fortuna so dreadful that, as we were leaving the restaurant with half the food uneaten, Tom pronounced it the second worst meal he’s ever had. I didn’t have to ask which was #1 on the Bad Food Hit Parade. This meal was perpetrated not in CR but in Cuenca, Ecuador. Our Ecuadoran hosts took us to a restaurant that specialized in spit-roasted guinea pig, a delicacy in Andean countries. Maybe the little rodents can be good in the hands of a more talented chef, but this was the specialty of the house! We found it strange that they weren’t even skinned, because all of us norteamericanos found the singed fur rather off-putting. Then we discovered that they weren’t gutted either, so we amused ourselves by identifying internal organs (“hey look, I’ve got a lung!”, “I have a kidney with the ureter still attached!”). The cuy (guinea pig) was accompanied by unseasoned potatoes and the kind of starchy corn that is fed to livestock in the US. Yum.

But I digress. For Christmas dinner, we made a reservation at a restaurant in Santa Elena run by a Spanish couple. This was the first great meal we had here. The Andalusian gazpacho was such an explosion of flavor, I was ready to go to Spain for our next vacation. We also had fideua, which is basically a paella made with capellini instead of rice. It was fantastic. We washed it all down with sangria and had a very merry Christmas.

Flying Girl

This morning we again had nice weather and went to Ecoglide for some ziplining on the lower slopes of Arenal Volcano. There were 15 cables and an optional Tarzan swing. Lillia was too small to go by herself, so she went tethered to one of the guides. It was amazing how unafraid she was. She is so trusting. “You’re going to go with this guy, and he’s going to make sure you’re safe” is all she needs to hear from us. She had a great time on the cables. When we got to the Tarzan swing, she went first. When they dropped off the platform, I was startled by how far down it was. A mother of three young boys pronounced her “awesome” when she displayed no fear and didn’t scream. Tom went next, looking off the edge and thinking, “OK, my 6-year-old just did this, so I guess I can”. He cracked up the whole group by doing a Tarzan yodel as he swung. I went next, and I have to say it was one of the scarier things I’ve done, although I didn’t scream. But screamers there were aplenty, both adults and children. We have one brave, and yes, awesome little girl.

Costa Rica

Okay, I never did get back to Taiwan, but I will, I promise.

Anyway, we are now in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has basically two seasons, the high season and the wet season, the latter renamed the “green” season by some clever marketing person. This is high season, so we were surprised when it rained almost non-stop for the first few days. At our first stay, near San Jose, it was downright cold, and I was wearing up to four layers at a time. Lillia was a little sniffly before we left and after a day in CR, she had a full-blown cold.

On Saturday, we rode from the San Jose area up to La Fortuna in the rain and went out to buy umbrellas. There is a huge volcano next to the town that was nowhere in evidence. I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of coming here, because CR is strictly an outdoorsy place. You don’t come here for the fabulous cuisine (there is none) or charming architecture (ditto) or any other cultural attraction. Fortunately, it mostly cleared overnight, and we woke to a splendid volcano view from our room yesterday morning.

There are many hot springs near the volcano, which sounded very appealing after several days of cold. So we headed off to Ecotermales Hot Springs first thing in the morning. Aah, was that nice. Ecotermales is probably the nicest hot spring I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to a lot. Several large pools lined with river rock are nestled in dense rain forest; they range from cold to Japanese hot, and are connected by little waterfalls.

Lillia has been gradually learning to swim over the past couple of years, and had gotten up to taking about four strokes before having to stop to take a breath. But yesterday for the first time, she figured out how to take a breath without stopping, and swam all the way across the pool unaided. We were all thrilled. But she was a little miffed that I kept getting distracted by the antics of a howler monkey in a nearby tree. It’s hard to compete with a creature in possession of a prehensile tail.