Day 5

Intense.  That's the word of the day.  The birds are more colorful, the fruit is sweeter and has more developed flavors, the air is more humid, the insects are all bigger.  There is also an intensity among the children.  Yesterday at the bus station and today in the living room, they are playing the card game "UNO."  I have renamed it "Bloody UNO," because of the cutthroat tactics they are employing.  Doubling up on Draw Two's, Draw Fours, Reverses and Skips, shouting out "UNO" right as someone else achieves one card status, forcing them to draw 7 more cards and take a step back from the finish line.  I only take comfort in the fact that they are speaking Spanish when they shout out the name of the game.

Complex regal flower

I met one of the residents here today.  He and his wife are from Germany, but have spent the last 10 years traveling in England, Thailand, and now here.  They have 4 children and unschool them.  They are raw foodists and are anti-vaccine.  Their youngest son made my day by reaching out and asking me to carry him in his 1 year old wordless way, and then proceeded to snuggle against me for a minute or so.  Sigh.  I miss those squishy baby moments of skin to skin.

Another accomplishment today was learning how to open a coconut.  Not the kind you buy in the supermarket, the kind that comes right off the tree.  First you have to remove a dry fibrous shell, and then you have to crack open the hard seed containing the creamy white fruit, and oily center or watery liquid.  A Tico, a local Costa Rican showed my how to ram the pointy end of a pick axe into the ground, and use the flat blade end to repeatedly whack the shell against until you can wedge and pry open the husk.  Then a machete comes in handy to carefully hit the shell with the sharp edge of the blade to create a stress fracture which releases the liquid inside, and provides a starting point to pry the coconut apart.  Delicious coconut water, and thick sweet coconut pulp and yummy coconut flesh.  We opened 4, and ate nearly 2.  The rest will store in the fridge.

A view of the fridge

Another moment from today: at about 8AM one of the residents here told me the produce truck was at the road....so I ran as quickly as I could, getting out of breath in this high altitude, got my grocery bag, wallet and willing children, and ran up the steep trail to the road.  There was a truck filled with boxes and bins of fresh fruits and vegetables, both familiar and unfamiliar.  I managed entirely in Spanish to learn what the vegetable Chayote is and how to cook it, and for 7,000 colones (about $12 USD) I bought 4 carrots (fat ones), 2 heads of lettuce, 2 chayote, 4 huge potatoes, a gigantic bunch of cilantro, a 5 pound watermelon, 4 cucumbers (fat ones), 2 large tomatoes, a bunch of bananas, 2 mangoes, 2 onions.  Chayote is a vegetable which is treated like a potato.  I will try boiling it one of these days.  The truck will be back on Thursday.  From the farm itself we have obtained chicken eggs, basil of two types, hot chili peppers, star fruit, bananas which are very very good fried in oil with a dash of cinnamon and coconuts.  The gardens are beautifully arranged and well maintained by locals.  It seems as if there is not much farm work here for me and the kids.

I spoke with the children about learning to find entertainment from within ourselves and the physical world around us in an unfamiliar place.  I think in the end, I might have the hardest time with this.  Here I am typing on my blog while the kids are outside in their bathing suits enjoying a "swim" in the torrential rain. No lightning.

Swimming in the rain

After the rain subsided, we went for a walk, which involved visiting the sheep, goats and rabbits, then running up the steep driveway to the road,  We walked along the road to the alternate driveway and discovered 2 beautiful puppies nestled together, frightened, on the side of the road.  It appeared to be a classic dump.  They looked bright eyed at us, but stayed still and quiet huddled together.  The kids and I talked sadly about how there was nothing much we could do for these puppies and hoped that their mother was off hunting for them and we were mistaken about the dump.  We returned to the farm and told the owners.  One of them came up to the road with us to see the dogs, and immediately decided that she could not leave them there.  They had found flattened dogs on the road before.  We carried them down to the farm and asked the main farmhand who thought that maybe the house down and across the road had puppies they were trying to sell.  So we walked back up to the road and to the house, and happily, they were reunited with their parents as well as about 5 other dogs.  The family expressed gratitude but I wonder if they had even noticed that the puppies were missing.  In any case they wouldn't die tonight.

The chutney

Dinner tonight was cabbage, carrot and leek salad with a dressing of lime juice, salt and fresh cilantro,  beans cooked with onion and garlic (none of the kids knew what a garlic press was!  I never use them at home, but my youngest learned how to tonight) and some rice, with a side of sliced tomatoes and some slices of fresh Costa Rican cheese.  They were offered some local coconut cookies, but only I liked them.  I also tasted a new fruit whose name I don't know, which tastes like a very tart mango.  It will make an excellent chutney with some grated coconut and cilantro.

I did some laundry last night and hung it out in the covered laundry shed, but at this rate, it will take 4-5 days to dry. They don't tell you about that in the tour guides.