Haven't you always wanted a Mon-KEY?

Thanks to Envirobel

More fantastic Costa Rica photos courtesy of Envirobel's new digital and far more persistant photo taking than I could manage... She took 900 photos!!! And so, enjoy these gorgeous sunset photos with seething jealousy!

Hello from down here in the corner

This little crab wandered a little away from home and here is clearly waving hello with his claw. How cute is that???

Fresh from the coconut

This was a delicious experience that I had to share with everyone. I'm not sure how we stopped at this fruit stand and noone but me picked up coconut water straight out of the coconut. "Where'd you get that?" people asked from all directions when we had had only one stop en route... Here I am sharing it with Bowleron, the choir director. For those of you now questioning - no, I am not in a choir, no I have not suddenly become un-tone-deaf. Bowleron is responsible for the trip and allowing me to tag along despite my horrific inability to sing.

Pejibaye (palm fruit)

The pejibaye-berry fruit

Bathroom sponge or veggie-root?

How can this dry and fibrous thing
Become a soup so smooth and creamy
or fritters to accompany ceviche?
It may not make the sweetest jam
But pejibaye is not only food,
It's also fork and spoon make out of wood!

We first encountered this in the form of a delicious creamy soup, like cream of potato, but incredibly more delicious. Then this mystery food item appeared as a fritter accompanying fresh sea bass ceviche, tasting completely different, but still delectable! We started joking that this was the source of all things tasty in Costa Rica. When jam of an unidentifyable nature arrived at breakfast, it surely was pejibaye! It wasn't, but it's such a fun word to say that it didn't matter. When, ordering (again) for dinner the delicious creamy soup, someone else found (and ordered) pejibaye fries that too were divine, we were caught up in an insanely animated discussion on this miraculous, yet mysterious, food item. The chef brought out a pejibaye, actually 2 - a whole one, and another cooked plain and sliced, and served with mayonnaise (of all things! And not even "con limon" - which I will explain shortly). We tried it. It sucked our will to live. It sucked every last drop of moisture available in our bodies. It made the saltine cracker eating contest seem easy. We searched for an antidote! Moisture! We cried! We were perplexed... We discussed the merits of such an item in the event of a bathroom flooding incident, as it would clearly soak up everything effortlessly. Finally, we discovered that since pejibaye is palm fruit, the palm wood itself is frequently used to make various items. It has a really pretty grain, I bought salad utensils make from it. The whole pejibaye experience inspired me to write a really bad poem (headlining this post) on the plane on the way home.


(I'm really not sure WHERE I'm looking in this photo...)
Mayonnaise "con limon". This is the best kind of mayonnaise. It was at our table for lunch one day, and it made me ridiculously happy. Deleriously happy! Firstly, the package was filled to just the right consistency that squeezing it in my fingers made a most satisfying "blurrrrp" sound. Second, it tasted so much better than regular mayonnaise! It had zest! It had pizazz! It did not contain high-fructose corn syrup! I ate more than I needed to.


Finally, a random incident for all you Queen's folk. At La Paz falls, I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt to try and prevent more mosquito bites, it is yellow and says "Golden Gaels" on the front - a freebie for coaching rowing. As I got on the shuttle bus to return to the visitor center, a lady said, in a shocked and surprised voice "are you from Kingston, Canada???". Why yes, I replied! She said she went to Queen's and recognized the Golden Gaels, and figured there weren't too many of them - despite the fact that we were both in Costa Rica at the time. So she, currently living in Minnesota, happened to be at La Paz, Costa Rica, at the same time as me, currently living in California - having both come from Queen's at some point in our pasts. What a great and inconceivably small set of odds that is! I should get Pi to do the math for that.

Welcome to Costa Rica

There's one line on this form that I enjoy terrifically... I'm sure the English translation is not exactly the same meaning as the Spanish it came from!

Cloud Forests

One of the most precious of the Costa Rican microclimates is the cloud forest for many ecological and environmental reasons. I won't go into that at all, but I must say that driving up through them on the way to Volcan Irazu was super super cool. They have this surreal mystical quality to them, as if it's where elves from Lord of the Rings should be living.

Crocs

We stopped on the side of this bridge to peer over and look at a river rife with toothy beasts. Then this guy came along and started throwing bits of chicken and wads of shrimp at them and it was great fun to watch the food land on the croc and the croc be completely oblivious.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

Cute, self-explanatory, but cute...

It was the pictures of food items that I enjoyed on this sign.

Sign at Jaco Beach - biggest party beach in Costa Rica.

Sign at Volcan Poas on the side of the viewing platform... I disobeyed.

Sign at the pool at Jaco Beach Hotel.

I guess it's spreading far and wide!

Colours Everywhere

Even though it rained a lot (being as it was rainy season in Costa Rica) the vivid bright colours of EVERYTHING easily shone through. I think I was most captivated by the colourfulness of the country (but most excited by the volcanicness of the country). I also took about a thousand photos of flowers, but can't be bothered to put them up just yet.

Volcanoes!!!

We first went to Costa Rica's 3rd highest peak (somewhere in the range of 3280m) - Volcan Irazu - very cool. Not active for quite sometime, but having this sickly acid green pool in its crater and very Jurassic Park looking vegetation. So awesome.



And Volcano number 2 that we vistited, very recently active (less than a month ago!) had an extremely bizarre milk-coloured pool in its crater (any insights on this geology friends? I thought it was a steam cloud, but had no one to discuss with). Steaming away we could hear fumaroles blasting sulfur gas out (we could smell it too). Volcan Poas is at significantly lower elevation, somewhere around 2780m, and a most delicious coffee is grown on its nutrient rich slopes!

La Paz Waterfalls

This butterfly is clearly dead, but I thought the rain on it looked really neat.




This is the sink in the bathroom. I'd be pretty happy with a bathroom sink like this!!!





This place was just breathtaking and full of butterflies... I'll let the photos do the talking.

Addendum to post below:

Firstly; what is this? Please, let me know, I'd like to hear YOUR take on the blue pig vehicle.

Secondly; as the three of us sat somewhat defeated by the gushing swollen "creek", Pringles picked up a piece of skree:

"Schist" he said, as a comment on the situation we found ourselves in.
I retorted with "I suppose we didn't have a gneiss day after all."
Rockbuddy Rich pointed out, however, that "we shouldn't take it for granite though."

It's great fun being a rock nerd at the best of times.

Last minute romping

I like deer.

The second "creek" we were to ford... no scale makes this difficult to imagine I think. But know that this water is deep and that this "creek" is too wide to jump.

A side view of the "creek" to cross... gives a better idea I think.

Speaking of jumping... since no crossing was to be had - jumping photo-op occurred instead.


Being me, and due to some scheduling difficulties, Pringles (new to the blog), Rockbuddy Rich, and I trekked up to Mineral King for some exploration that got cut short due to snow melt causing one of the creeks we had to ford to turn into a raging waterfall (see photo above- aieeeeee!). We saw beautiful blue sky, snow capped mountains, deer, marmots (see below), water falls (that we didn't have to cross) and enjoyed it not being 106oF up at that elevation. Couldn't be much of a better way to spend the day before I take off for Costa Rica. Although packing may have been more productive...