Food

In honor of Thanksgiving we bring you

Amy and Becks foody awards thus far

Best things you cant get in the states: 1. Naca Tamales-Oh so good corn meal, meat, rice, corn and who knows what else all wrapped up in a banana leaf, torture because you can only find these things on holidays or on weekends in the big cities. I'm telling you with this recipe Chevy's could take over the planet 2. Cacao- chocolaty milk with a cinnamony twist usually served on ice. (In Nicaragua we stayed one night on an organic self sufficient farm and the Cacao we had there was so good I literally almost started crying) 3. Frescas- anything remotely resembling a fruit put in a blender with either water or milk and served at every meal. We are so buying a blender when we get back!
Honorable mention goes to Gallo Pinto that beans and rice staple that is so tasty that Nicaragua and Costa Rica are currently engaged in a fight to see who can claim it as their national dish. Very tasty but almost too simple to award "dish" status and over-utilized to be sure! (And for the record Julia from Orosi still makes the best Gallo Pinto that we could find-Sorry Nicaragua)


In the I don't know why they eat that when they have tamales category:
The national dish Nicaragua: boiled yucca served on a banana leaf (great so far) topped with a kimchi type of cabbage salad thing with (wait for it) fried pork skin. Four tourists sat down to eat and one Nicaraguan boy walked away with four portions of fried pig skin for lunch.

Strangest meal so far: And the winner goes to Luz Maria our Costa Rican homestay mother with a breakfast of jam, cheese and margarine sandwhiches (not as bad as you would think!) Coming in a close second however, Luz Maria again while it was apparent in her eyes a proper meal consisted of beans, rice plus the fried group once served us Chinese style fried rice plus beans plus potato chips and fried plantain all part of a balanced meal. Honorable mention in this category goes to one of our Bed and Breakfasts in Buenos Aries that for "breakfast" offered cracker packages with caramel. I have to file this one under surprisingly good.

Things I fear: The meat section in any Argentinian market. These undoubtably contain parts of animals I have only seen in a scientific context or on CSI. Other things I fear- the menus at any traditional Argentinian Parrilla (or grill) which has all of these weird parts on the animal on the menu. A typical menu will have about 11 different animal parts on it ready to be grilled for you. yum. The scary thing is that we keep forgetting to bring our dictionary with us when we out. I guess at heat we are just like any traditional American we want our brains, livers, intestine and tongues where any dignified person wants them in our hamburgers!

Ode to a hot shower

(note I pulled this image off the internet with a google search for suicide shower head )

They say that you cant really appreciate something until you have lived without it for awhile. I absolutely believe that this is true. Now I don't know how I beat Beck to this Blog topic but I am referring of course to hot showers. The Central American shower is a truly cultural experience. Showering there is not so much a routine as an art form. Any American idiot can fog up a bathroom mirror or sue a landlord after they manage to scald themselves while carrying out their daily ablutions-that's easy! Its practically cheating because American showers have an entire faucet dedicated soley to controlling the flow of preheated, virtually inexhaustible hot water. All you have do do is just turn the tap and vol-la instant 2nd degree burns. Hell yeah!

Now I don't want to ruin it for all of you who are planing to go to Central America at some point in your life, maybe you want to figure this out on your own. If this is the case I would recommend that you skip this blog entry, however, if you take your bathing rituals as seriously as some of us, here are some tips for maximizing the tepidness of your showers in Costa Rica.


Step 1: Figure out how to turn on the water- this is usually very easy as Central American showers only tend to have one tap, turn it one way and the water is on turn it the other way and the water is off. Beautiful.

Step 2: Determine whether or not your shower is equipped with a suicide-flash-heater-unit-thingy-of-death. If present your shower head will be slightly larger than a soft ball with a little slider dial (more on that in a minute) If your are still unsure look for uncovered (most likely sparking)wires running from your shower head and up the wall and probably over to that light switch you flipped when you walked in the bathroom. If your shower head, however, looks like a normal American shower head your are SOL no hot water for you. (hey some losers thing that cold showers are invigorating-sucker!)

Step 3: Make sure that the slide dial thingy is all the way to the left do this BEFORE YOU TURN ON THE WATER!!! This is where self-control comes into the equation. If you are new to this process during the course of your first couple of showers you are going to inevitably question whether or not the dial is set correctly. You are wrongly going to think to yourself 'this shower is f#^$in freezing I must not have set the dial quite right' and you are going to want to fiddle with the the little dial thingy. Do not touch the dial thingy! If you really didn't't set the dial thingy correctly suck it up live with your mistake and take your cold shower soldier, better luck next time. Or you could ignore the fact that you are not only soaking wet but standing in a puddle of water and go ahead and fiddle with the damn thing that is powered by the loose wires stapled to the wall which is now also dripping wet. They say that after a cold shower an electric shock is one on the most invigorating ways to start your day. Now Beck and I have both done some preliminary tests on this subject and while undeniably eyeopening that burning taste in your mouth really makes it difficult to enjoy your gallo pinto and in all likelihood your fingers wont regain feeling until midday not to mention the fact that you have totally set your self up for a bad hair month. But I digress.

Step 4: With your body as far out of the shower as possible turn on the water. This is where the real skill comes in. For the hottest shower you need to keep the water pressure as low as possible while keeping it high enough for the flash heater thingy to turn. The trick is to turn the water up until all of the lights in the house/hotel/pueblo dim, that means the heater is on. Then you turn the water as far down as possible, if the lights come back on you loose, that means the heater is off and you need to start over do not pass go do not collect $200. Now once you think you have a good water pressure you need to let the suicide unit warm the water for a few seconds I highly recommend using this time to have your shampoo bottle opened and ready because after a few minutes of hard work your suicide unit will probably turn off, the lights will turn on, your shower will become instantly cold and you will have to start your water pressure adjustment process all over again. The trick is to anticipate this and be on the other side of the shower blissfully sudsing your hair and well out of blast range so you can start the water flow readjustment process again at your lesiure.

Now one thing that the Costa Rican shower experience has on the American shower experience is entertainment value. Not so much really for the person taking the shower but more for whoever happens to be in the building when an inexperienced showerer is doing their thing. Virtually turning a quiet country home into a disco lounge as he/she clumsily adjusts the lights from the shower. Quite honestly its better than television. Especially when the lighting effects are accompanied by the sounds of Beck (I mean a hypothetical showerer) crashing around, trying to dodge a suddenly freezing steam, or the muttered curses of frustration (yes that is as hot as it gets) or the smell of burning flesh (I told you don't touch that dial when the water is on!) Why didn't we bring a video camera!

Yeah I know now, as I stare at the 3 knobed luxury contraption they call a shower here in Buenos Aires that it is absolutely true sometimes you just cant appreciate the best things in life until they are gone.

*Time Warp* Week #1 in Orosi (September 2007)

For all of you who already got this email sorry.

With the one hour time change and assuming that our plane landed on-time we've clocked it at 27 hours (15 waking) before Beck and I were recruited to a local indoor soccer team. OK I should say 27 hours until Beck was recruited to the local soccer team. Its not that Adrian (futbol recruiter extraordinaire) didn't want me to play it just didn't really occur to him to ask. Apparently women don't really play soccer in Costa Rica. This is the conclusion I drew not only from the fact that I was the only female in the futbol arena for the better part of the evening but also from the laughter/cheers generated from the throng of young male spectators every time I stole/shot/passed the ball/managed to remain erect for more than 30 seconds in a row or did anything remotely productive on the field (this was not often). I must say it was quite exhilarating to have my own personal pep squad although I did start to feel sort of bad for the guy who got laughed at for having the ball stolen from him by "la nina." Luckily for the egos on the other team my unsupervised supporters lost interest in my exploits fairly quickly and decided that their attentions would be better spent by all squeezing into the small public bathroom together, no doubt performing some unholy act involving rapid toilet flushing, and then all stampeding out at once laughing and looking back over their shoulders. (I wish them no ill will, however, for abandoning me in my time of need, pushing the limits of the local sanitation system is an important part of childhood) Actually, for all persons involved over the age of 8, they did not seem fazed by the fact that I was a girl or by Beck and my awesome ability to dribble the ball directly into members of the opposite team nor by Beck's technique of falling over every time the ball came into his possession. Actually they seemed to look at us, good-naturedly as a challenge to be overcome, a handicap if you will. (Honestly though what did they expect putting two Americans on a team with a German a Kenyan and two Ticos (Costa Ricans)?) Eventually it was discovered that the best thing to do with us was to rotate Beck and I off the field for ever increasing amounts of time and to put Beck in goal and off the field whenever possible. This strategy allowed our team to come back from a 7 goal deficit in the first half to tie the game 15-15 overall. Go team gringo! We are so playing again next week.

Well I guess I should backtrack and mention that our journey to Costa Rica went off pretty much without a hitch. (Yea!) The crowds at SFO were non-existent at 11 o'clock at night (lets hear it for traveling in the middle of the night on September 11th). The 40 minutes we had to make our connecting flight at San Salvador international was plenty of time to walk the 7 gates (aka half of the airport) to our departing flight. Once we arrived in San Jose we made it through customs pretty quickly. We did have to hold our breaths, however, while the guy at the customs booth spent about 10 minutes looking at my old-school laminated passport apparently trying to decide if it was a forgery or not. I haden't really noticed before but the lamination around the picture has totally separated from the backing making it look a little sketchy. In the end I think he decided that it was far too early in the morning to be bother dealing with 2 tired gringos and their (shall we say) "broken" Spanish and let us through without a comment. (should be a barrel of laughs trying to get back into the US with that POS). Once we made it through customs our shuttle driver was waiting right outside. We knew he was our driver right away because he had a sign which read in large letters: AME HEIDERSBACH and BEK OLFEN. It's comforting to see that there is some place on the planet, besides Germany, where spelling Heidersbach is not an epic task. From the airport it was an hour and a half ride to Orosi, the small town, where we are going to be taking Spanish classes and volunteering to teach English for a month or so.

Orosi is located south of San Jose and about 40 minutes drive beyond Cartago (aka the closest city anyone has ever heard of). It is located in a valley surrounded on all sides by coffee farms and banana trees (pictures to follow soonish). We have had the good fortune of arriving in Costa Rica in the middle of the September 15th celebration extravaganza. September 15th (just as a reminder because I'm sure we all know this) is the day that Costa Rica (in typical Tican fashion) politely informed Spain that it no longer wished to be a Colony and that they were going to go ahead and not be part of Spain anymore if that was alright with everyone over there. As it turns out it was and apparently the better part of Central America thought that this was such a nifty idea that they wanted to go ahead and be their own countries too.



Everyone was pretty excited about this whole arrangement for about 10 minutes and then all hell broke loose blah blah blah 200 years later enter 150 5-year olds with homemade paper lanterns with real candles inside stumbling around in the dark (yes there were fireballs) amidst a sea of high school drum lines and that is pretty much a Costa Rican 4th of July in a nutshell. (Oh and there has been music playing pretty much straight for the last 3 days. And Tamales (so good) and there is also a torch that is carried all the way from Guatemala (Olympics style) to Cartago and lit at 6pm on the 15th (classic).)

Stuck in San Jose

Amy and I are currently stuck in San Jose indefinitely. Our flight to Peru has been canceled due to a strike of air traffic controllers throughout the country. Here is a very entertaining article I have translated to English (using a website which makes in funnier than a good translation)....

"Wednesdays 14 of November initiate strike Peruvian air controllers Economy - (10:35 hrs.) *
It is anticipated that the suspension of workings lasts 72 hours *

They demand a wage increase and they protest by the delay in the purchase of radars for the international airport of Lima The Financier in line Lima, 14 of November. -

The Peruvian air controllers today initiated a national strike of 72 hours in demand of a wage increase and against the delay in the purchase of radars for the international airport of Lima. The Secretary General of the Unified Union of Controller of Air traffic (Sucta), Wilber Ruiz, showed that about 750 workers will accept the measurement of force at national level. He added that several pilots have complained the lack of communication in the flights, when demanding to the Peruvian Government the quick acquisition of "communications equipment of end technology". Ruiz indicated: "the present radar does not work with efficiency, single is worked in a forty percent for the aerial flights". "


...... I hope they win.

No worries though, we'll find someway out of here, we'll give y'all updates when this is all over.

In the beginning....

Where to start... So I guess the idea for this whole crazy trip started around February of 2006 when Amy was accepted into a PhD program at UCSF. Well seeing how she had been working there for over two years already, and would be staying there for another 6, she felt that she needed a long break before returning to school. We had been toying with the idea of taking a long vacation, when I proposed to Amy and she accepted (sucker). From there the trip turned it into a honeymoon. Amy differed her acceptance for a year, and I quit my job. We looked at many different places, and decided that since we both knew a little Spanish, and the cost of living was low enough for us to travel for nearly a year on the money we had saved, to spend our time abroad in Central and South America. First we planned to go to Costa Rica to a small town called Orosi where there was a VERY affordable Spanish school called Montana Linda. After a couple months in Central America we would fly to Argentina, stay there for a few months, then travel to Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador....etc, returning home in May of 2008. So on June 30th, 2007, Amy and I tied the knot, and received many kind gifts from our friends and family to help us make the trip possible. We bought tickets to Costa Rica, leaving on the 12th of September (we wouldn't want to tempt fate) so we spent the next two and a half months preparing for our trip, and did a bunch of traveling. We drove to Washington and spent a few weeks in British Columbia boating, backpacking, and rock climbing. Then we came back to California and did more climbing and an AMAZING backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevadas. Just before we left we got to enjoy the wedding of two of our good friends. So on September 11th, we packed our bags and at midnight we boarded the plane for Costa Rica.

Locked out....

So Amy and I are are currently locked of the house of the family with whom we are living, so we have found ourselves with some time to kill at the internet cafe and hence here I blog (I can´t believe that´s a verb now). Since we have been a little slow on getting this going, and we already have SOOOO many stories to tell I intend to write ¨Time Warp" posts to recount them. For now however, I figure that I will just try update eveyone on our current situation. We are currently in Orosi, Costa Rica living with a Tico family (Costa Ricans call themselves ticos because they love to add extra suffixes to words like -ico which means little or cute). Three weeks ago, before we traveled to Nicargua we were living with the same family. We have also resumed taking Spanish classes and have found that our Spanish has been getting better during our travels, so thats good. Amy is still a bit ahead of me but I like to think I am catching up. We just finished eating a ham and cheese pastry which is one of our staple lunches. Yesterday we had a great time visiting the aguas calientes, or hot springs, on the Rio Macho. The springs were very shallow, only a couple of feet, but they were VERY warm. Amy and I laid in the sun for about an hour, watching huge bamboo trees swinging in the breeze. After we had had enough relaxation we wondered back through the coffee plantation by which we had entered the hot springs, and got caught in a typical afternoon rainstorm. At any rate now Amy and I are trying to plan the next part of our adventure, to Argentina. We are going to fly out of San Jose (the capital of Costa Rica) of the 14th of November for Buenos Aires. Classes continue for us for three hours a day until friday the 9th. After classes end we intend to visit the city La Fortuna, which boasts the most conical volcanoe in Costa Rica, Arenal. This volcano is still active and is apparently spewing lava and molten boulders currently. Well thats about it for now.... pura vida!!!

Day one, and by that I mean day like 55....

So this is our first blog and this is our first post. Unfortunately my time is up at the internet cafe because I took to long to set up the blog, asi hasta luego!