In my last post, I said I was going to miss any dish made with plantains when I leave Costa Rica. My aunt emailed me and asked what the heck is a plantain? A plantain is a much like a banana but plantains tend to be firmer and lower in sugar content. Bananas are most often eaten raw, while plantains usually require cooking or other processing, and are used either when green or under-ripe (and therefore starchy) or overripe (and therefore sweet). (Thanks Wikipedia!)
In it's raw state, plantains come in two varieties...green which are unripe, and yellow which are ripe and sweet.
Green plantains are used to make patacones...one of my all time favorite dishes here in Costa Rica.
Sweet, ripe plantains are used to make fried plantains, baked plantains, plantains in syrup, and plantains with cheese.
Fried Plantains
Baked Plantains
Plantains are also made into "chips" and come in a variety of flavors, i.e. bbq, lemon, etc.
I know I can get plantains in the States and I plan on making plantain dishes a regular part of my culinary adventures!
I've been here for four months now and the list of things I am missing about my life in the States is growing...
- my family - my friends - my house - my car - air conditioning - spicy Cajun food - good Tex Mex - my DVR - Aussie hairspray - po-boys - college football - Saints football - dishwashers
However, I know there are things about my life in Costa Rica I'll miss as well...
- my Tico family - my new friends - the scenery - the weather (only the days that are HOT!) - ceviche - any dish made with plantains - Latin music - the Tico attitude of "mañana"
We started back to school this week. The teachers were there for three days without the students. I didn't know the school could be that quiet! We used the time to prepare for review week and exams. This school runs on a calendar year and has four two-month sessions called bimesters. Each bimester, the students have exams at the end of the session which is preceded by a review week. It was very interesting to make up exams without knowing what exactly my students learned in the first five weeks of this bimester! I also spent the time creating a "syllabus" for the next bimester so that the students know exactly what is due when, what the homework is each day, and when the tests are. I've found that my 6th grade class is very lackadaisical about turning in homework, studying for tests, etc. So, my OCD has kicked in and I've planned each class period, homework assignment and test for the next two months.
The students returned today and I came home with a headache. I wonder if there is a correlation? I haven't slept well the last two nights so getting up this morning was really hard. I could hear Alejandro whimpering down the hall when his dad was trying to wake him up. I felt the same way...I don't wanna go today!
I found out yesterday that the school is closing at the end of this year so I expect the last two months will be interesting...I'm just not sure if it will be interesting in a fun way or a frustrating one! I think it will probably be fun...the director has already scheduled a bbq at her home for the teachers on Friday night.
I'm on the North Pacific coast, hanging out in the sun. I've been here since Thursday evening, but it rained most of yesterday so I wasn't able to explore much. However, this morning, I briefly visited four beaches. I say briefly because I'm not much of a beach person and I was only at each long enough to stick my feet in the water and take pictures.
The first was Playa Pan de Azucar, or Sugar Beach. I ate breakfast at the Sugar Beach Hotel, overlooking this view...
From there, I went to Playa Brasilito where I saw people gathering oysters (looks like hard work)...
...which I had to walk across to get to Playa Conchal. This is a pretty neat beach, covered with very small sea shells. It's beautiful, but difficult to walk on!
My final stop was at Playa Tamarindo, the most popular tourist spot in this area...
The hotel I'm staying at is right on the beach and has a beautiful pool area. I spent several hours at the pool this afternoon, relaxing and soaking up the sun.
On my way down the mountain yesterday, I stopped at a cafe to have lunch. There, a friendly iquana chowed down on some lettuce near my table.
Not sure what's going on in the world of blog, but I've uploaded a video to YouTube and am having problems with it as well. First, PhotoBucket, now YouTube! Hopefully, all will be right in the world of blog soon!
The second stop on my advertures on this trip was in Monteverde. Monteverde is at the top of a mountain and the trip was a rough one. From Escazu, I took the Pan American Highway. This is the highway that runs through Central American and is the main corridor. My naive thinking assumed that the highway would be at least four lanes all the way. The areas I've been before have been four lane. My assumptions were wrong. A good part of the "highway" is two-lane and winds through the mountains so it was slow going in some places. However, that was the best part of the trip. Once you turn off the highway to go to Monteverde, it is a 35 kilometers (20 mile)path to Monteverde. I say path because to call this a road would be a lie. I'd have been happy with a dirt road of some sort, but most of this was rocks and potholes. It took an hour to drive the 35 kilometers.
Once I got to Monteverde, I was glad to make the trip. In reality, I stayed in Santa Elena, within spitting distance of Monteverde. Kristal, the daughter in the family with whom I'm living, lives in Santa Elena and works at a funky little hostel called Pension Santa Elena. This is where I spent the night.
I went to dinner with Kristel and some friends at this neat little place with butterfly decorations.
Monteverde and the surrounding area are famous because it is in the middle of a cloud forest. What is a cloud forest you ask? It is a generally tropical or subtropical evergreen montane moist forest characterized by a high incidence of low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level. It's hard to describe so here are some photos...
I explored the cloud forest on Thursday morning. I toured through the Santa Elena Cloud Reserve and then walked through the Selvatura Park and saw the cloud forest from high above on the hanging bridges. I took about 200 photos of trees, forest, flowers, etc. etc. Here's a sample...
For some reason, the slideshows that I've created in PhotoBucket aren't working properly. So, if you can't see the photos, check back and hopefully the site will be working right soon!
I left on Wednesday morning to explore a couple of different parts of the country. (We are off school for the...Independence Day holiday). I've rented a car and I'm on my own for 5 days...just me and my map. My first stop on this trip was in the artisian town of Sarchi. The town is well known for it's beautiful, handcrafted furniture, as well as other arts and crafts. I picked up a few gifts for friends and family, and of course, took lots of pictures.
On Sunday night, I got to see the coolest thing...the whole reason for the trip to Tortuguero. As I've mentioned, Tortuguero is a protected wildlife area for sea turtles. This is the time of year when the turtles return and lay their eggs. They do this at night and the whole process takes 2 - 2 1/2 hours. My tour went to the beach about 10 p.m. and we saw four turtles, each in a different stage of the process. We weren't allowed to take pictures or use any type of light since it disorients the turtles. So, I'll try to describe it as best I can.
The first part of the process is for the turtle to leavem the water and find a place to lay her eggs. These turtles are 250 - 300 pounds and 3-4 feet long. They use their front and back flippers to crawl along the sand so they are moving pretty slow. Once they reach the vegetation, they find a place to starting digging. The turtle uses here front and back flippers to dig out a bed. Then she'll dig a smaller hole that is a little bit deeper. This hole is where she will leave the eggs.
Once the bed is made, the turtle will position herself over the hole for the eggs and start depositing them. Each turtle will lay between 100 and 120 eggs. While she is doing this, she is in a trance-like state and she crys big tears to clean out the sand from her eyes. Usually, with each contraction, the turtle will lay 2-3 eggs.
Once turtle mama is finished laying the eggs, she starts to cover the hole up with dirt. She will then climb out of the bed she's made and start her journey back to the water. It takes about 45 days for the turtle babies to hatch and usually only 5 from each nest will survive and make it to the water.
I have to say, it was a little embarrassing watching the turtles lay their eggs. Althought, it was very cool to watch, it IS a private moment!
Since I wasn't able to take photos, I've searched online and found this video. It's not from Tortuguero but it will show you what I saw.
On Sunday morning, I took a boat tour through one of the canals in Tortuguero. We saw several animals that we don't have in south Louisiana...including a three-toed sloth that I think looks a lot like Chewbacca from Star Wars !
The lodge were I stayed in Tortuguero is quite literally in the middle of the jungle. While you can't see the monkeys, you can certainly hear them in this video clip. This is what I woke up to both mornings I was there, around 4:30 a.m.
I’m on a two night excursion to Tortuguero National Park, a protected wildlife area for sea turtles on the Carribean side of the country. The place where I’m staying is called the Evergreen Lodge. It could just a easily be called “Girl Scout Camp” since I was having feelings of déjà vu when I walked up to my cabin.
My Girl Scout camp didn’t have a turtle pool though and that’s where I’m going to spend some time on Sunday.
The food is better here also, although the Congo Monkeys howling at 4:30 a.m. where something I could have lived (or slept) without!
Getting here involved another boat ride through more waters that resemble the swamp land of Louisiana. This will be the third time I’ve seen this kind of environment in Costa Rica. I don’t see this much bayou, swamp, whatever in south Louisiana and I live there!
After we settled in and had lunch, it was a quick taxi ride by boat to the “town” of Tortuguero…more like a village. We visited the beach where the sea turtles lay their eggs and then explored the town a little bit. The local kids were practicing their musical number for the Independence Day parade.
I’m writing this in my cabin on Sunday morning. I’m planning to take the taxi boat to town this afternoon and post this at the internet café. However, I’m not holding out a lot of hope since this is the internet café…
Obviously, I didn't have much luck at the internet cafe since I wrote the above post on Sunday morning and I'm not posting it until Tuesday morning. I was able to get online but since it was about 105 degrees in the room with the computers, there was no way I was going to spend an hour uploading posts and photos!
I left Saturday morning for a two day trip to Tortuguero National Park. Tortuguero is a protected area on the Carribean side of the country where sea turtles return each year to lay eggs. On the drive here, we stopped briefly at a banana packing plant. I’m pretty sure it’s a Del Monte facility. Here, they pack 3000 boxes, each with 110 – 120 bags of bananas, every day. Did you know that the thing that grows bananas isn’t a banana tree, it’s a banana plant? The root is buried beneath the soil and each plant is only good for one cluster of bananas. It takes 6 months for the plant to grow and the cluster to be ready for harvest so the “trees” are planted in cycles so they can harvest year round. The bananas are harvested and carried to the plant through a system of pulleys.
Here, the bananas are stripped from the cluster and separated into those for export, those for use in Costa Rica, and those that are either too small or too big are used for baby food.
The bananas are then rinsed and loaded into plastic containers. If they are going to Europe, the bananas are then bagged.
Finally, each bunch is weighed.
Picture this the next time you bring home a bunch of bananas!
My apologies to my faithful readers. I haven´t posted anything in the last week. Truthfully, there hasn´t been anything to say. I go to work, go to class, go home. However, right now I´m in an internet cafe in Tortuguero and I´ll have lots to tell about and pictures and videos to show when I return home tomorrow night. Check back on Tuesday!
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Yesterday, I had a Spanish class. Usually, this is one-on-one with Imelda, my teacher. However, Imelda wasn't able to make it to class yesterday, so I met with another teacher and her student. The student is new to learning Spanish, although she speaks three other languages and understands more Spanish because of this. So, the three of us were talking and I was telling a story of some sort (I don't remember what the subject was exactly) and the teacher asked me to SPEAK MORE SLOWLY so that the other student would be able to understand me better! I was floored! I thought I was speaking slowly! This was a very exciting moment for me :D
I've received the photos from my snorkeling trip in Bocas del Toro. As previously mentioned, the coral was a variety of beautiful colors and shapes. Who knew such colors were part of the underwater world?
Gracias A Dios is a phrase often used in Costa Rica to express gratitude for good fortune. I have several reasons to "Give Thanks to God" since all of my family and our various homes survived Gustav without any issues. My grandmother was hospitalized while in Longview, Texas, which is where she evacuated to with my parents and aunt. However, she is doing much better and will be released tomorrow. So they should be back in south Louisiana on Friday. Thanks to all for your thoughts and prayers.
