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Published: January 1st 2011
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Nicaraguan Christmas Tree
From Leon, where there were lots of "recycling trees" all over the town After having posted my first impressions of Costa Rica, a month has passed by now. Two weeks of these four I’ve been travelling to Honduras and Nicaragua for my first field research phase (on success factors for collective marketing)- all by bus, which takes two days one way (Costa Rica – Honduras). It’s been an incredible amount of new impressions and information for such a short period, and I can’t give it justice in a blog like this. Just shortly, and rather on the organisational part: I’m glad that I’m a person who doesn’t need a lot of security (with regard to planning ahead), and that I’m a natural optimist. Every single time I started a new part of my trip (changed the bus) I didn’t know for sure where I would get off, and for that reason I also had to organise my pick-up by my colleagues during travelling. But, as probably anywhere in the world, a mix of language skills, friendliness and maybe the fact that I was travelling alone as a woman helped a lot, and everything turned out well.
Christmas feeling in Costa Rica
Actually, I did not get any Christmas feeling here although the supermarkets
Puerto Viejo
... the best weather we could get at the Carribean were playing jingles based on traditional German Christmas songs up and down, and even on the petrol stations small Christmas trees with colourfully blinking lights had been put up. But it was just too warm, and most of all there was no Christmas smell – no home-baked cookies!
To change that, on the 23rd my friend Cecilia came to visit me, three days late due to snow in Europe. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in San Jose, and she brought lots of presents for me – some ordered, like chocolate and liquorice, and some as a surprise – Christmas cookies from my mum! Mmmmmh. It also helped that at night the temperature dropped to 13 degrees, which wasn’t what I had planned for with nothing more than flip-flops on my feet. So, instead of dressing up for a fancy dinner Cecilia and me had a nice evening wearing our fleece jackets, me also wearing Cecilia’s shoes which were pink and two numbers large – a real Daisy Duck look.
Escaping the rain (again)
Did I mention the cold in San Jose? Well, after two days we went to my home in Turrialba, where Cecilia experienced
Punk bird disturbing still life
This bird just appeared in the picture from our balcony, just like random tourists in front of the sight you want to capture the Costa Rican non-stop rain. So, the next morning we took a bus to the Carribean to finally get some sun. But, actually, there it was just as wet! after two more hopeful days in Puerto Viejo (of which a few hours had been dry, at least!), we took another bus journey completely across Costa Rica to the Pacific Coast. And this time it worked: As soon as we had passed the Central mountains, the sun became visible! After one night in the harbour town Puntarenas, we took a morning ferry to the Nicoya peninsula and for some random reason ended up in this place called Montezuma, which is
the hippie town. As it is really popular, for the first night we had to take a room in a questionable hostel at the beach, but now are staying some more days in a really nice place, with a balcony towards the sea, up in the trees, with lots of wildlife to see without even going out. And we went swimming, me slowly overcoming my fear of high (I feel monster) waves.
Food 2
More on food! My neighbours in Turrialba had also noticed I’m sort of food-obsessed (or let
More balcony wildlife
A white-faced capuchin monkey which was breakfasting on purple flowers hanging down from the trees us call it interested) and proposed to me to open a kind of hostel with a special breakfast service… But, actually here my ice-cream plans are catching up with me again! There’s an organic café here at Montezuma (run by a Turkish woman) which is serving vegan ice cream, and yesterday I tried the vanilla-cardamon one, which is just incredibly tasty. Today I’ll have another variety, and tomorrow a third one. Cecilia is supporting my research through taking additional samples. In the evenings, we’ve also eaten really nice food (though very untypical for here, which is o.k. for a change): Shrimp tempuras on a salad made from mango, spring onions, celery, sweet peppers, carrots and a dressing made from lime, sesame oil, sweet chilli sauce and something else I cannot place; another time we had a Peruvian rice dish with seafood. At the Carribean coast we did have really typical food which is just called “rice and beans”, but these are cooked in coconut – it’s the original of the cafeteria dish in Turrialba which I mentioned last time. With very tasty chicken. But one of my food favourites so far I actually found in Honduras, and as I heard it’s sort of the national dish from El Salvaldor: Pupusas. These are like thick tortillas, also made from maize flour, but filled with beans and cheese and freshly toasted on a grill. You get them served on special plates which are made from a plastic grid, covered with greaseproof paper and along with cabbage salad and spicy pickles. Oh, and I learnt to prepare yucca (also called manioc in other places), and some other local vegetables I didn’t know before.
Research progress
As I mentioned in the beginning of the blog, I think the research part is not blog-compatible, so I’ll rather concentrate on the other parts of my stay here (food, mainly). But as my research is on bananas, I can just tell of a banana day I had at Puerto Viejo – and to those who do not know I should mention that I never ever eat bananas in Germany: For breakfast, I had banana bread. Then, the owner of our hostel let us try a variety of bananas called “apple bananas”, which really have an apple taste, and some self-made banana vinegar. For lunch, I prepared myself a baked (ripe) platano (cooking banana). Later I had some plantain crisps with salt and lemon, and along with the dinner fried (green) platanos. So, I think you can tell it's been a real immersion process here!
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