Tables & Tortillas

Tuesday – 15 August

Sorry for the late update this week. Our phone and internet have been down for the past 6 days… one of the curses/benefits (depending on your perspective) of living in a small “developing” nation. ;-) It took 6 days just to get the phone company to decide it really might be their problem (and not our phone that was broken) and come out to check the lines. Turned out it was indeed their problem—someone unplugged our line about a mile down the road when they were doing maintenance last week.

This past week has been one filled with new routines. Norma and I are now focusing on our Spanish skills, and we have both been working for our Spanish lessons. Norma has continued to help prepare food for Saray in her restaurant, and I have been helping build new tables and benches for the restaurant with Saray’s husband Melvin. One of the things I brought down with me was one of the older saws from my shop at home, which I eventually plan to donate to the local school when we leave. Tools here in Costa Rica are comparatively VERY expensive, so while my rather beat-up sliding miter saw is nothing special at home (every contractor has one), it is a very hot commodity here, where a simple circular saw is the most expensive tool owned by many carpenters.

For a variety of reasons, the economics of carpentry & construction in Costa Rica are very different… First, tools cost anywhere between 25 and 50% more in retail terms, then the relative cost in terms of a percentage of income is really difficult to comprehend: a new tool like my saw might be equivalent to as much as a month’s salary for a typical carpenter in Costa Rica, where in the US it might equal only a day or two of salary. Consequently, everything is built a little differently here. Tico carpenters are consequently very good at figuring out unique ways to accomplish many traditional building tasks with minimal tools. Sometimes that means some wonderful old-world style craftsmanship, and sometimes that means “McGuyver-ing” things in less elegant, but typically pretty effective ways. Here in Monteverde, it usually means everyone settles for a bit more “rustic” look in buildings, furniture, etc.

At any rate, that’s what we actually set out for in the tables and benches Melvin and I have been building. Because the food is traditional Tico “county cuisine,” more rustic furniture only seemed appropriate. They are built out of a very nice local Avocado wood, and pretty simple in construction, but very strong and serviceable. Plus this allowed us to custom fit the tables to the space we had, and thus squeeze 22 seats into less than 200 square feet.

On Norma’s end of things, she is learning some very unique and traditional methods of Tico cooking. She now knows all the local vegetables (ranging from the typical beans and rice (gallo pinto), to the more exotic, like yucca and achiote), as well as how to REALLY make tortillas from scratch. Scratch of course, is a relative term—and we’re not talking just starting with corn meal or masa flour in this case; she actually shucks the corn, cooks the corn on the cob, then cuts the kernels off, then grinds the kernels by hand (twice) into a paste, then finally hand presses and shapes them into a traditional tortilla form, ready for cooking. I don’t know if Norma will ever actually make one like this at home (its’ a LOT of work for just a tortilla!), but it certainly makes you appreciate what goes into a REAL tortilla when you do actually get one. And they are VERY good!

Keeping with the food theme, we also got our first taste of a local fiesta this past weekend. The Torres family, who we rent our house from, had a going-away fiesta on Saturday night for an American student (Rachel) who had been living with them for the past 5 months. The fiesta included lots of traditional food, including “cucharones,” which are a Tico version of deep-fried pork rinds. Definitely not on the list of health-conscious foods, but awfully good! No Tico fiesta would be complete without lots of dancing and Tico music, and everyone had a great time watching even the smallest of the kids trying to dance along. Clearly dancing is a big part of any party or get together and Norma has threatened to find us dancing lessons so we won’t have to sit on the sidelines. The dancing isn’t the type you’d just be able to up and do. Lots of very complicated moves…somewhere between ballroom and salsa!

Well, as you know, there are lots of bugs here and Niall is fascinated by them. We are currently keeping two lizards and a scorpion, which necessitates daily bug collection for feeding purposes. Niall has to capture at least one cockroach or other beetle for Garfield (fence lizard #1) and one cricket for Ode (fence lizard #2) and then some new bug each day for the scorpion (currently nameless) and with unidentified eating habits. We have not had any scorpions in our shoes yet, but both scorpions we’ve found have been near the shoes. Not sure what the attraction is there, but we are very respectful of it and shake out our shoes religiously.

While we’ve had a few bites and stings by various wasps, spiders and mosquitoes (there are actually very few of those around), our worst encounter so far has been with some itty bitty ticks. Poor Niall took an alternate route through some high grasses at school to the meadow where all the kids play. Somewhere along the way the poor guy got ambushed by at least 100 ticks. The school nurse noticed the ones on his arms, but it wasn’t until he got home and mentioned this that we took a good look at him …only to find him covered from head to toe! Poor kid, we had to strip him bare and douse each one with alcohol to get the darn things to let loose. To make matters worse they were very small and looked just like his freckles. More than once we tried a little too hard to remove a couple of his little freckles and Niall was quite put out.

Luckily, the ticks here aren’t known for carrying disease, so we aren’t too worried, but now we’re very careful to wear our high top Wellington type boots when we go out anywhere off trail.

Speaking of which, we had a little Alice in Wonderland episode yesterday. We decided to take a short hike up through the cow pasture behind the house to the edge of the neighboring rain forest. When we got to the top of the pasture at the edge of the rainforest, we noticed that Marvin (our landlord) had been working to cut up a tree near the fence line…when we went up to get a closer look we came upon a break in the fence leading to another pasture we hadn’t seen and walking through this we came upon an extensive, highly maintained, +/-4 mile trail system through the rain forest and basically right behind the house. Upon further exploration, we discovered that Marvin’s land backs up to the property of one of the bigger hotels and their lovely (but clearly underutilized) trail system. Many of the trees had recently been identified and we had a lovely time hiking around. Marvin has his own little trail system that runs up and down the small creek that bisects his property which we have explored as well. We have also figured out how to use this trail to get to Niall’s school and circumvent a good portion of two long, steep hills that must otherwise be climbed.

That’s about it for this week… This coming weekend we are heading down to the beach for one night, then spending the long “Mother’s Day” weekend (yes, Norma gets 2 Mother’s Day’s this year!) in Granada up in Nicaragua. Time to brave the border again and get Scott’s visa renewed. We got a new guidebook for the Granada area and there look to be lots of things to see and do, including swimming in volcanoes, etc. We’ll report next week on how our international transit skills are progressing!