The BIG DAY is next week. Saturday the 8th to be exact. Married… again. Second time.
My ex wife is in town along with her husband. She is here for Lucia’s baptism and not for the wedding. Que sorpresa! More stress though. They are here with my son Bob and his wifey and grandchild Jacob whom I have not seen in two years.
My mind is falling apart. I am forgetting to return calls. I forget other stuff. I remember stuff I THOUGHT I did (but really didn’t do). I find myself standing in parts of the house, and I cannot remember why I am there. I don’t sleep a lot anyway, but now I am down to maybe 2 hours per night. I wake up sweaty when I do sleep.
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Costa Rica is not known for it’s fine cuisine. In general, this is probably a deserved reputation as it tends to be centered around rice, beans, chicken, pork, and beef (tongue especially is very popular here). However, how the above items are combined is within the realm of the cook and that makes all the difference. I find a lot of the cooking here to be really good! Generally, beef here is terrible. I think this is due in part to the lack of vast grazing lands. Also, the concept of aging a steak is not yet part of the Costa Rican culture.
To me, it has always been a wonder why folks move to a foreign country like Costa Rica only to live in residential strongholds of their countrymen and spend all their time at Tony Romas, TGIFridays, etc.
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I am getting married on the 8th of October and I am REALLY getting nervous.
So is my bride to be… known in this blog as ML, Maria, Luisa, Guisa and other assorted names,
She has not been married in almost 20 years. I have not been married in about 15 years. 35 accumulated years of flying solo. We bounce around each other like 7th graders.
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When I moved to Costa Rica, I was just amazed at the vast amount of horse pucky about this country.
I met 75 year old couples who had been told they needed to get typhoid shots to visit Costa Rica. I met others who were taking quinine for the non-existent malaria. Other told me about how the water here will make you sick. Then, after I lived here a while… I found that there are things that people really DO need to know, but are never told of. So, I decided to do something about the mis-information.
Last week, I published a web site that I have been building for almost three years. I have spent just less than 3,000 hours of work building it. It contains several hundred pages, tens of thousands of links, photos and references, and is, as far as I know, the only totally accurate web site about Costa Rica in existence. I recommend it to anyone who plans to visit, vacation, live in, or retire to Costa Rica.
I call it: The Real Costa Rica. Enjoy!
My friend Laurie died this week. At 40. It is a loss.
I knew her for about 20 years… maybe more, and she lived a hard life. Not hard in terms of deprivation… she had everything… wealthy sucessful parents, a good job, a sometimes happy marriage… but a hard life nontheless for she was surely plagued by demons. Some of those demons were well documented… the drug use, the alcohol, the inappropriate behavior.
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One of the neat things about living in Costa Rica is the variety of cool fruits available here.
Not all are automatically good to my taste. One particular fruit whose name I never bothered to learn for the obvious reason (I hate them) is a golf ball sized thingy that people cook for about two years, then eat with
mayonnaise. Ticos (Costa Ricans) love them!
However… one of the fruits that I truly adore comes only for a short time each year. It is the mamón chino (see photos above and below) and it is truly excellent treat.
They do, however, have a somewhat scary appearance that can intimidate.
The first time I saw them I didn’t even want to touch one much less figure out how to eat it. Needless worry. The spines are very soft and a quick pull apart with the nails on your thumbs gets you to the real fruit!
The fruit itself is wrapped around a seed and you sort or run it around inside your mouth until you have sorta chewed off the fruit.
So if you ever get to Costa Rica… check out the street vendors.
One kilo (2.2 pounds) will set you back a buck.
