La Georgina and the Hummingbirds at 10,000 feet in Costa Rica

Villa Mills. Blink and you'll miss it. 

It is not much more than a broad spot in the road. Harder to miss, just beyond the blue sign, is a crisp-looking red and white restaurant, which may have several cars and a bus parked in front depending on the time of day. That's La Georgina, founded in 1947, just a year before the 44-day Costa Rican civil war that sparked the abolition of their army and instigated several social reforms that carry on today. Must've been interesting times for this spot, since a lot of the fighting occurred up here on Cerro de La Muerte.

 I have doubts whether this place was ever in any danger of being obliterated by that war, but in any case we're certainly glad that it's still in operation. It's a spacious place and has restrooms built for no-waiting. The food is the usual Tico buffet, not bad, but not terribly creative either. The main attraction for us is in the back.

The Utterly Cute and Deliciously Edible Tepezcuintle

One of our Tico neighbors found this baby animal in the woods, cowering in a hollow log. It appeared to him that it had been abandoned by the mother, so he took pity on it and brought it home to care for it. It wasn't much bigger than a large kitten then. It took to bottle feeding of raw goat's milk right away. It's just about big enough now to release back to the wild.

Cute and possibly delicious, but who could render it lifeless? No me.

It is called a tepezcuintle in this part of Costa Rica, a piscuintle up north and has a multitude of other names throughout México and Central America. The common name in English is the lowland paca. They can grow up to 26 lbs in weight and produce two litters a year, although I'm not sure "litter" is appropriate since they only give birth to one or two progeny each time.

The Best Italian Pizza in Costa Rica Right Here in Pérez Zeledón

Comidas Tipicas, aka typical Costa Rican food, is not much to write home about in general. There are some unusual ingredients in cooked dishes such as yucca, ñampi, platano, chayote, etc. but they are usually prepared without spices other than salt or pepper. It's nutritious, it fills you up, it's different than what you were used to back home. Plenty of tasty, tropical fruits and veggies in the country make up for the lack of Tico culinary imagination however.

Anyway, you can imagine what most pizza is like here. Bland, overly sweet sauce, stale dried herbs, a few diced onions, sweet peppers and carrots(!), topped with greasy cheese and shredded mystery meat. Adding insult to injury is the dough. It would make the Pillsbury Doughboy proud. What's more, you often get to wait 30 minutes for it to arrive (alá the Woody Allen joke about the two ladies at a Catskill mountain resort).

Marcos and a fresh pizza pie

So, to find a diamond in this rough of bad Costa Rican pizza comes as the most pleasant of surprises. Stella d'Italia is truly a pizza star.

Owned by chef Marco, an Italian native who became expat about 20 years ago, he has been operating his pizzeria for several years in San Isidro. His shop used to be tucked away in a corner of the mini-mall across from the fire station, but last year he relocated to one of downtown's main streets.

Marco uses only ingredients that he imports from Italy: olives, cheeses, sausage and real prosciutto! He has a standing menu of flavor combinations a meter long and always seems to have a new combo to hawk every time we visit. Of course, the sauces are authentic as is the crust, which he makes from scratch in the shop. It's delivered to your seat in 10 minutes flat.

His most expensive pizza is 15 bucks in the family size. That's enough for me, Tamara and our voracious teenage son with a little left over "para llevar."

A New Vivero - Costa Rican Greenhouse Garden

Gardening in Costa Rica requires a different mindset than what we had cultivated in our native Pacific Northwest. Sure, even up there, in USDA Zone 8, it is possible to have a garden all year around. In fact, before shipping became feasible, farmers in the Willamette Valley used to grow winter crops such as broccoli and cauliflower for local markets. Here, however, it's more like the growing season is full on for 12 months.

Since we're up at 4,000 feet elevation, you might think a greenhouse would be handy, but temperatures rarely dip below 70 degrees, so that is not a problem. The problem is rain in the 8-month long "green season". There's simply too much from May into December in our part of La Zona Sur.

The original, now defunct vivero

Therefore, greenhouses here might look familiar with their clear roofs and raised beds, but their purpose is different. Usually the sides are open to allow free passage of air, so not much extra heat is generated. There are some crops, such as peppers, that do like some extra heat and for those some Ticos build enclosures of plastic to keep it in the 90s or better.

One of the last tasks the construction crew performed before they left was to build a quickie vivero for us. It was built from some of the many slender trees we have on that side of the property and covered with a special kind of thick plastic that is UV-resistant. Supposedly, it lasts about three years in the tropical sun. Ours wasn't up that long before the wooden frame and wooden raised beds had gotten beyond repairing and we tore the whole thing down.

New Year's Tomatoes Are Ripening

We usually have one or more "volunteer" cherry tomato plants near the compost barrel that get an ample supply of nutrients from the "tea" that drips from the brew within the barrel. These tomatoes grow pretty much all year, providing a handy snack or some extra color and zing to our salads.

Tomatoes here on the Pacific side of Costa Rica really start to come into their own during the final month of the rainy season and throughout our summer season. Summer is here to bring in the new year, scant rain, plenty of sun, perfect conditions for many vegetables that would love the long, dry summers in Oregon. Using a vivero, tomatoes and many other veggies thrive all year here, however. A vivero is simply an open-sided structure with a clear roof, used to shed the rain mostly, though it does raise the ambient growing temperature a bit, also.

What's Missing In Our Son's Life ...

These are the only places we know of in all of Costa Rica that have Dr Pepper! :^(

p.s. Yes, this is a joke, Sean is not that spoiled.

Related articles

• Back to Pura Vida in Costa Rica
• Dr. Pepper and Peanuts
• Dr Pepper Pays To Protect Precious Water Supplies
• I Almost Gave Up Dr. Pepper

Is Costa Rica The Happiest Place On Earth? Maybe Not for the Reasons You Think.

In a walk across the web, I stumbled over this article about how Costa Rica is again the Happiest Place On Earth, and my stubbed virtual toe is still smarting a little.

A lot(!) is written about how Costa Rica is an undiscovered paradise (mostly by the Tourism bureau and real estate agents methinks), and this Happiness Index thing keeps popping up every year. 

This particular article, however, seemed more over-the-top than most, so I couldn't resist dissecting it a bit - tongue-in-cheek - based on my own experience in "paradise." Yes, I've cherry-picked for brevity's sake, but 80% of the article is intact below. I'm going to use my own scoring, +1, -1 and 0 for neutral. Let's see what my "happiness index" comes up with.

Having just been voted the single-most happiest place to live on the planet, Costa Rica has grabbed the attention of many. But the question burning up the Internet is, "why is Costa Rica ranked the happiest place on Earth?"

...

First off, the country is ideally located in Central America between  Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south.

I have no idea why that positioning would be considered an ideal location and the article doesn't say, either. I think a happier location would be between, say, France and Spain, or elsewhere on the Mediterranean. Will give this the benefit of the doubt, score 0.

Living Free and Easy in Costa Rica Near Mt. Chirripó

Not too long after we landed here in Costa Rica and the little village of Matasanos, we met some new neighbors, Magaly and Salvador and their two kids. I introduced them in the middle of this old post about our neighbors. Salvador is an Argentinian-born Greek, and his wife is Venezuelan. A year or so ago they visited family in Greece for an extended stay and when they returned they settled up towards Mt. Chirripó near San Gerardo de Rivas. Since then we don't see them as often, but we recently visited them a couple of times in their new riverside house, which is still under construction.

Open-air living in Costa Rica, you have to love it. Whenever we visit I tell Tamara that the next house (if there is one) we'll build like this, open, organic, with tree trunk posts and beams. It's so refreshing, especially with the sound of the river nearby and a small waterfall on the other side. The house has been built right into the rock, which is incorporated into the rooms downstairs.

 Of course, the house isn't finished by a long shot, so over time it won't be nearly so open, but I can't imagine it will be completely closed and screened either. I just hope they're able to stay long enough to complete it. 

As always, we have a great time there catching up on things, drinking coffee, and if we're lucky getting to taste some of Magaly's great cooking. On our second visit to this house she whipped up a big pan of moussaka, a Greek eggplant dish that sticks to your ribs.

Cerveza Artesanal - Craft Beer in Costa Rica!

Looking like three sheets to the wind before she even gets inside!

One thing I can definitely say I've missed after moving here from the Pacific Northwest is the plenitude of craft beers, aka micro-brews. That is, until now! A month or so ago, we were passing through the outskirts of Cartago on the usual San Isidro - San José run, and I spotted a small billboard depicting six tall glasses of creamy-headed beer; each a different shade of caramel. Time was really pinching right then, so I didn't make the turn following the sign's arrow that trip. The next time through, we made a point of finding the establishment to which that sign pointed.

Whitewater Rafting on Costa Rica's Rio Savegre

OK, you're in Costa Rica, with your kids, and your son's birthday is coming up. What to get him for a present? How about whitewater rafting! Sounds like a great idea to me. Our fellow ex-pat friends decided to do just that. They contacted Dominical Surf Adventures to set it up. The mom, Adrianna, loves a bargain, so she talked them down on price significantly (it's not exactly peak season). Her son, Alexander invited Sean and a couple of other mutual friends for a day on the river.


The Savegre is one of Costa Rica's most pristing rivers, running south along the Central Pacific Coast. It sports Class II to Class IV rapids (they did up to Class III on this trip), so it's popular with rafters. [video below the fold]

Ñampi

There are but a small handful of words in Spanish that start with its 15th letter of the alphabet. Literally, you could count them just using your fingers. Ñampi is one. In English, we call it Taro. Every culture that uses this remarkable food plant seems to have its own common name for it. Cultivation of the plant was done by the ancient Romans, though it appears to have originated in India, from where it quickly spread both east and west, finally to the Americas. It's a staple food in some parts of the world and quite common here in Costa Rica.

The plant above grows at the back of our vivero (greenhouse)  and we have several planted on the property here and there. They are ideally suited to places with lots of rain and like rice and lotus can be grown in flooded areas. 

The leaves (or petioles) end in a corm, which branches into several tubers. Just one plant, when harvested, yielded us a 5 gallon bucket full of tubers. They take about a year to grow.

The tubers clean up easily and taste very much like a white potato. They are prepared in all the same ways that potatoes are, fried, boiled, baked, etc. I'm not sure how the nutritional qualities compare, however. The leaves are equally edible with a little cooking. 

One caution however: both the leaves and tubers contain calcium oxalate, which contribute to kidney stones. So, before cooking they should be soaked overnight in cold water and/or have a pinch of baking soda added to the cooking water.

Christmas Festivities

We hosted a potluck afternoon dinner Sunday with friends and neighbors to celebrate Christmas Day. Dishes included fresh homemade pizza, tropical salads, pejibaye dip, pumpkin pie, and an assortment of other desserts, including rice pudding, and a fabulous carrot cake made by my sister Tandra.  I had a collection of 40s/50s Christmas music mixed with tracks from Linda Rondstadt's Canciones de Mi Padre playing all afternoon.

Including the kids, there were about 20 guests in attendance.  There was lots of news to catch up on amongst all of us and discussions of new year plans.

Magaly and Salvador are nearly done with their new house on the river near Rivas, Billy and Elisia are busier than one-armed paper hangers with a full hotel, and Luis' family continues to develop with the eldest at-home daughter on the cusp of starting her first year at university.


The weather cooperated beautifully, no rain, partly cloudy and random sun breaks bathing the nearby cliffs in warm summer light. Everyone's anxious for summer to start, and it looks today as if it really is here.

The kids played board and video games nearly the whole time when they weren't chowing down. Just an overall relaxing day with good company and plenty of Christmas spirit to spread around. As is customary, all the ladies (and me I might add) chipped in on the clean-up, so that we could relax after the last guest had departed. Thanks ladies!

Bachelors On The Mountain

Early Sunday morning (as in 5 AM) I drove Tamara up to Juan Santamaria airport and saw her off for a month-long trip to visit family in Ukraine with a swing back through Chicago at the end where she'll meet her girlfriends. She had a loooong trip over via Bogotá and Frankfurt with two 7+ hour layovers (hey, the price was right!). I waited until her afternoon today to give her a call knowing she'd be sleeping late. Her return trip will be much more relaxing I'm sure.

The day before she departed we had a 1-week early birthday party for Sean with a few friends over and a surprise visit from his two best friends who live up in San Gerardo de Dota. He is now (well, not now-now, in 4 more days) a teenager with all attendant signs thereof. Actually, he is a pretty mature 13 year-old in my opinion, but I'm not fooling myself about what lies ahead!

Feriados Tipicas

Translation: Traditional Holidays. I'm only a month and a half late in posting these pictures of this year's Noche Tipica at Sean's school back in July following on the heels of the national holiday celebrating the annexation of the Guanacaste region to Costa Rica (basically the whole NW corner of the country).

It was shortly after the Central Americans countries declared their independence, early in the 19th Century, that a referendum, of sorts, in the region took place asking the residents if they wanted to stay with Nicaragua or become part of Costa Rica. Some ill-humored Ticos still try to get in a dig on Nicaragua over this event even today (get over it!).

Every year at the school they celebrate one evening close to this holiday with a fiesta for the kids and parents. Parents and teachers prepare traditional dishes and desserts and help sell these treats to raise money for the school.

Tamara chipped in her help this year serving up the Carne con Salsa over by the bleachers with the other sixth grade moms.

The dances by the different grade levels are really the highlight of the evening for me, though I pigged out on most of the food wares as well (it was a restless sleep that night for me).

Caribbean trip - part two: The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful

The highest of highlights on our short trip to the east coast was meeting fellow blogger Jana Stotler and her husband Tom. Jana's already written about our dinner together on her blog, Costa Rica Dog Lover. It was an evening of stories, laughs, and good food at the Flip Flop restaurant in Puerto Viejo. We traded accounts of various aspects of our journeys to Costa Rica and the sometimes puzzling or amusing aspects of daily life here. No surprise, Jana is just as enthusiastic live-in-person as she comes across in her blog. Tom is warm, thoughtful, and intelligent and I look forward to more conversations with him.  Hopefully, they'll be able to visit us here soon.

Taking a stroll not far from our hotel one encounters what are everyday sights to the locals, but wonders to us. Howler monkeys rest in the trees during the day and howl as if they are King Kong during the cooler mornings and evenings. We would later get an up close and personal look at them at a local animal rescue center.

 
 
These marvelous Oropendola nests were in a nearby tree. Though we didn't see the birds, we did hear them at another location. You simply have to visit this site to take in their incredible calls. Once, near Puriscal we observed the astounding gymnastics that they perform simultaneously while calling.

Entrance to the Iguana Rescue Center

The area from just north of Cahuita down to Punta Uva has several animal rescue sites plus a national park. We were able to visit two of the rescue sites, the Centro de Rescate de Jaguar, and the Sloth Center. The Iguana Center looked very inviting but we've left that for the next trip.

Coffee anyone? Our Local Organic Coffee Plant in Southern Costa Rica

As luck would have it, we are only a kilometer from a "branch office" of the Associación Alianza group of family farm organic coffee growers. Here, they have a small processing plant for the locally grown coffee right on our normal commute route into town. 

We've come to know the manager, Pablo, well over the last couple of years. We always buy whole beans from them since they are so fresh. It's more expensive than the non-organic 1820 or Del Valle brands, but much, much less than the organic beans in the local supermarkets.

Little by little (poco a poco), they have made many improvements to their operation. This last year, they completed a spiffy second floor cafetería (coffee shop) that serves espresso drinks. You can sit inside or outside on the balcony to enjoy the view of the mountains and town below. I noticed that among their syrup flavors there are a couple of bottles of liquor, too, but I have only tried the non-alcoholic lattes so far.

At the beginning of the month, they had their grand opening of the cafetería. The drinks were free, and I rounded up most of our gringo neighbors to come down and have a drink and a tour of the operation. 

Berry, Berry Tasty

Our Norte-Norteamericano friends are on the cusp of Spring now; hope is on the way. So, I reckon that they won't think I'm being overly fiendish with this posting. It won't be long until they'll be telling me about the gorgeous summer in Oregon during our "green" season here.

Summer here, as in Oregon, is my favorite time of year, and that's especially true now that our wild berry season is starting up. 

We have three kinds of sweet berries on the property in various places. I'm careful to avoid hitting them with the gas trimmer knowing that it won't be long until they bear fruit. 

 
Two of the berries are a type of raspberry, though unlike the ones we had in Oregon. One is red, the other is black (but it's clearly not a blackberry plant). The red ones have small, light leaves, akin to a rose leaf, and a very delicate, slightly sour flavor (see top picture). 


The black variety, pictured at the right, has a much stouter, white stalk with large thorns and as you can see the berries grow in tight, grape-like clusters. They ripen far too slowly for my impatient self. Their taste to me seems rich and wine-like. I think these are the best of the three and the ones that I would like to actively cultivate.



 
Just like in most areas of the world, we have the wild blackberry, too (called mora here in CR). 

This variety doesn't appear to be so invasive as the Himalayan blackberries that are gradually taking over the Pacific Northwest, which is a little surprising given the year-around tropical weather. Their stalks are nasty, micro-thorned and tough. The berries are small, hard, and scrumptious.

 

 When we get in the mood for some berries we take a hike around the cleared spaces on the finca and in about 15 minutes we've gathered enough for a few bowls of cereal with some leftover for the next fruit salad. Not only delicious, they are an excellent source of Vitamin C and other antioxidants. This is just the first picking so as the weeks go by we should be hauling in a lot more of them.  

Fish On! Trout Fishing in Costa Rica's Mountains

Fields of potatoes near the top of Cerro de La Muerte, Costa Rica

Trout fishing would probably not be the first thing to come to mind for most people when you mention Costa Rica but, in fact, there's quite a bit of it available thanks to the much cooler streams in the mountains. Cerro de La Muerte, the second highest mountain in Costa Rica and about an hour's drive from our place abounds with small trout ponds and many of the rivers that start their journey to one of the two oceans bordering the country are home to wild trout too.
 
The last week of Sean’s mid-year vacation, I took him up to Cerro de La Muerte to seek out one of the many private trout ponds for a bit of angling. Cloudy, misty, and cool enough that you needed a jacket was the weather on hand for the day.

We turned off at La Trinidad (about halfway to San José from San Isidro) and made a steep descent for a couple of kilometers down into a small valley to a place called Finca Los Prados, through pine forest and potato farms in blossom. 

Soon we were at the well-marked entrance. Rolling past a compact white wooden house, smoke billowing out from the chimney, we pulled up to a series of ponds and a bar-restaurant, which was closed up tight. Apparently, we’d come in the off-season.

Fiesta!

December 12^th

Saturday we had our long delayed “housewarming” party with our Tico neighbors and friends. We were expecting up to 60 revelers (but got about 40+) so we held it at a church’s rancho in nearby San Ramon Sur. We had two sets of door prizes, one for each of the construction crew and a second one for other folks who came.

The main attraction was about 20 kilos of chicharrones cooked up by Gerrardo (who you may remember from a previous post was the guy who helped us move our stuff from our semi-trailer up to the house). 

Happy Thanksgiving up there in the north

Written November 20^th (Happy Birthday brother Brad!)

Long time, no blog. Our one year arrival anniversary, the 4^th, came and went relatively uneventfully. A toast here and there, but nothing more. And here I am with a little time to kill, sitting on some old tires in the lot of the shadetree mechanic who’s replacing my broken alternator in the truck. Tico dog an arm’s length away snoozing in the clear sky morning. Any time now Salvador will come with his old black Land Cruiser and we’re heading up to Chirripo to a wood mill to get some boards on the cheap.

Everything seems pretty routine now, so that may be where my writing inspiration is going. Same old stuff, same old problems, gradual progress to solutions. Still no internet at home (will everyone join me in no longer capitalizing that word?), but at least we have a bid now from I.C.E. (the country elect/comm monopoly) for brining in phone lines, which will lead to DSL access in a few (probably several months). I’m trying to negotiate down the price, but will know if they are going to do the work as early as today.

Sean’s sick at home with the flu, right during exams week, which is pretty inconvenient for him. He was feeling pretty bad on Wednesday but he was on the program to give a speech on dogs in front of the whole school so he buckled down and did it, proud parents looking on, Dad running the slides. Seems like he’s over the worst of it today at least. Only one more week of school for him and then he’s off until February 8^th. Just in time as his aunt Tandra is coming down for the month of December and we should have some good times.

The weather is definitely changing now as CR summer is just around the corner. The mornings are clearer and even if the clouds move in during the afternoon, the rain mostly holds off. They say this is the time when temblors (small earthquakes) are more prevalent and indeed we’ve had a few already, short and sweet, no aftershocks.

My self-taught welding lessons continue as I’m expanding a small roof structure (our old temporary cochera) behind the current bodega to create space for Tamara’s ceramic pieces and give her a dry workplace. I guess I’m making progress as I get a few more decent welds and it’s actually starting to be fun.

I don’t know what else to report. Hard to believe, but it all gets even more boring than the above, lol! Probably have a ton of pictures and stories when Tandra gets here and we make some forays across the country. Planning on visiting the Caribbean side, a trip down south to San Vito, up to Puntarenas, and take in a volcano or two while we’re at it. Tandra’s also going to be spending a lot of time at the dentista to get some work done she’s been putting off and to essentially pay for her trip down here with the savings compared to going to a U.S. dentist.

So, not much to add. We’re enjoying the hell out of the weather here, especially when I check what’s going on weather-wise in Hillsboro. Our ornamental garden is taking root now and a couple more hummingbirds have joined the bachelor in our backyard Porterweed hedgerow and a couple more species have shown up elsewhere on the property. The Green Hermit is our favorite amongst them, very tall (8”), long curved bill and he’s full of curiosity. He’ll fly right up to you and check you out. He came into my bodega the other day and flew all over it checking out the shelves, doing inventory I guess.

Cojala suave!