Charity Chili and All the Fixin's

The 5th Annual Atenas Charity Chili Cook-off is almost upon us and it's all hands in the kitchen. Scheduled for Sunday, February 12, the event is expected to attract over 1000 people this year and raise much more than the $3500 they donated last year to the children's orphanage in Atenas, Hogar de Vida. Ordinarily, being the chili chef that I am, I would be joining in the cooking fray, hoping to win recognition for my mini-world-famous chili con carne. Instead I've been recruited to serve on our Tico friend Marcial's team, along with neighbor Jackie, another fine cook, to help promote Marcial's excellent Italian sausage. (Check out our new Facebook page, which I helped Marcial set up.) Needless to say, our recipe relies heavily on the wonderful flavors of that meat.

In preparation for the big day, we have had several "trial run" dinners lately where Jackie or I have prepared our favorite recipe using the sausage, with Marcial overseeing the process. He actually has virtually no experience cooking chili so he's relying heavily Jackie's and my expertise. As a result we have enjoyed some very tasty chili lately, along with the pleasure of the company of Marcial and Sadie and Jackie and Neil and occasionally our other local friend Marc.

Neil "rolls" a good one

At the dinner party last week here at our house, after the chili was consumed Layne turned on the Wii game console and set up a bowling tournament for the gang. It's amazing how realistic that system is. Other than the weight of the ball, it "feels" like bowling and requires all the same movements and adjustments as in the real game. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, including Sadie who took her turn bowling with intense seriousness and in spite of her inexperience, compiled a respectable score. But the real contest was between Neil and Marcial, who as you can see, both got their game on. Although Layne and I remember the fun that night, we don't remember the winner!

Marcial bowls as Sadie looks on

On Saturday Layne and I joined our friends Leonard, Sally and Kevin for a bus trip into San Jose for a meeting of the Costa Rica Democrats Abroad group, which is affiliated with the overseas branch of the U.S. Democratic Party, Democrats Abroad. It seems there are enough United States expats living in various countries to comprise the population of a whole other state, some four to six million of us around the world with an estimated seventy thousand here in Costa Rica. I'm happy to report that Costa Rica's Dems Abroad group is one of the fastest growing clubs, according to the Democrats Abroad website. We met a number of new acquaintances who share our passion for progressive democratic values and learned some ways we may be of help to the group in social media marketing, voter registration and get-out-the-vote this year.

After the meeting, Layne and I walked from the Holiday Inn where the meeting was held a few blocks over to the National Theater, crossing through a lively city life scene on the plaza next to it. We wandered into an Apple store nearby where Layne bought a cable so we can watch movies through the computer, displayed on the television screen. Then we headed for the National Theater. A friend had recently given us an historical five thousand colones note, featuring beautiful artwork that is displayed full-size in the National Theater. I wanted a second copy so I could have the front and back framed together as an addition to our small Costa Rican artwork collection. We had been told there were street vendors selling them around the theater. And sure enough as we emerged from inside the theater, there was a young man with a handful of the notes, selling them for only 500 colones each, about a dollar.

With purchases in hand, we headed for Coca Cola, the large bus station from whence our Atenas bus departs. After asking directions from sales clerks in a shoe store, we found we were headed more or less the right direction. So we soldiered on and gradually the street scene became more like that around the bus staion, a bit rough and tumble with discount clothing stores all along the way. At a street vendor's stall, I asked again, Donde es Coca Cola, señor? One block down and one block over and there we were, just in time for the 2 p.m. bus. Another excellent adventure in our ongoing exploration of the land of Pura Vida! 

High Times in the High Season

Here we are, time for another Spanish/English dinner party with Marcial and Sadie tomorrow night, which means that almost two weeks have past since my last entry here. If I thought that “retirement” meant inactivity, boy, was I wrong! We scratch our heads at times wondering what keeps us so busy. In some ways, our schedule fills up with the luxuries of retirement: time to take long walks, time to correspond with friends, time for elaborate dinner preparations and dinner parties, and for Layne, that long-delayed novel is taking shape. Indeed, the man has over 150,000 words written and, he says, only a couple more chapters to go. Then we’ll have to learn what all is involved in self-publishing on the Internet.

The Aquacate Tree

But the dry season (or “high” season, referring to hotel rates) is definitely here. Suddenly the landscape has changed from lush greens everywhere to patches of dry, golden brown grasses on the hillsides. It’s somewhat reminiscent of those “golden hills” of California, but that would be in June, not in January! Our aquacate (avocado) tree is absolutely weighted down with blossoms and hundreds of tiny avocados. We can hardly wait till they ripen and we can enjoy guacamole every day.

Tiny avocados soon to be ripe!

Another plant in blossom right now is the orchid, my favorite. Waiting for the bus a few days ago, I noticed that the big cluster of orchid plants attached to the mango tree had suddenly burst into bloom. And what odd blooms they were! Orchids are known for the enormous diversity of flowers they produce and this was certainly one I had never seen before: curly, delicate purple petals around a pink-throated central core on a long spike coming out of the leaves. Quite beautiful and so unusual.

A most unusual Orchid

Orchids on the Mango tree

With the change of seasons, we are learning more about agricultural patterns here. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, we noticed some workers in the cornfield below us, chopping down the dry stalks with, of course, machetes. Just two guys to cut down the entire field! But labor is cheaper here than machinery and requires less maintenance, so to speak, so such heavy work is mostly man-powered.

Another example of labor-intensive work we recently encountered is making charcoal. On a trip back from PriceSmart with our friend Jeanette, we stopped off at a finca (farm) along the road to Santa Eulalia that Marcial had told us about where we could buy organic honey. While there we questioned the mustachioed gentleman in charge about the other products that he had in his large garden and learned that he also grows organic tomatoes, chili dulce (much like a green pepper), hydroponic lettuce and green onions. Part of the mixture in his hydroponic bins, we noticed, was bits of charcoal and since Layne and I had just purchased a small barbeque grill, we asked if he sold charcoal as well. Yes, he said, and proceeded to guide us further back in the garden to where two men were piling logs about 3-4 feet long into a deep gulley they had apparently dug. 

Organic gardener with Chili Dulce

It seems that they will somehow set the wood on fire and then bury it in dirt so that it smolders without burning, turning the wood into charcoal. Amazing! Whether or not this charcoal would work for our grill, we are yet to determine but it was a fascinating how-to lesson for us Gringos. 

Rough Road to a New Year's Bash

Dennis & Gerardo

We’ve had a great start to the New Year, beginning with a festive New Year’s Eve party at the home of our friends, Dennis & Gerardo of Pure Life Development real estate. In the two years we’ve been here, they have been our go-to guys in finding great places to live in Atenas. They are building an “eco-development” up the mountain from our first apartment in Alto del Monte in an mountaintop area called Estanquillos and they are now living in one of the first homes they’ve built there, a magnificent hilltop villa with an indoor pool, out-of-this-world furnishings and fantastic panoramic views of the Central Valley and the surrounding mountains.

When Gerardo invited us to bring in the New Year with them, we were delighted. We so enjoy their sense of humor, zest for life and big smiles that we knew we’d have a great time. And indeed we did, AFTER we managed to get there!

In English, the directions to their house sounded easy enough: “Take the road to Estanquillos. Go up till you come to a pulperia on the left.  At the next curve, turn right and go down the hill...Cross the bridge and then up the hill.  Our entryway is on the left hand side (bright Orange)!”  But the Spanish directions for the taxi driver were something else again: “200 metros norte del recibador de cafe, Calle Iris....Entrada naranja....” Unfortunately, they didn’t mean much to our cab driver, who was unfamiliar with Estanquillos. So after some hits and misses, we found the  bridge and started uphill as instructed, only to encounter a road that embodied every dire description of Costa Rican streets you ever read. Rocks, dirt, gullies, washouts, big humps. And remember, it was after dark. Oh, and of course, there were no streetlights.

As we slowly eased up the steep slope, our taxi high-centered with a wham. “Oh no, señor!” I said to our driver. “Este es no correcto!” This can’t be right! He understood and began slowly backing down the rough roadway. I had already tried Dennis’ cell phone but there was no signal this far out. In desperation, we returned to the pulperia, a small grocery, to ask for directions.

Dennis & his mom, left; new friends Peggy & Rick, right

With the driver and Layne waiting in the car, I tried calling on the store’s landline but Dennis’ cell phone still didn’t respond. Then I described Dennis and Gerardo to the proprietor. Yes, she told me, pointing up the mountain to a lighted house at the top. That’s where those two gentlemen live and yes, that’s the right road. Unsure that I understood correctly, I sent our taxi driver in to discuss the situation with the grocers. Layne and I watched anxiously from the car as the animated conversation carried on. Finally, our driver returned and despite our protests that it would wreck his car, in true Tico style he headed back up the road, determined to transport his passengers to their destination.

Which he did, bless his heart, gunning his engine and banging his oil pan in order to make it up and over the rough spots. He totally earned the big tip I gave him. Finally, we arrived and hiked up the last steep slope of driveway to a festive atmosphere of music, laughter, salsa dancing, great food and new friends to boot. At midnight, we opened champagne then watched firework displays all across the nighttime vista. Thanks, Dennis and Gerardo, but maybe we’ll wait until that road is paved before we come for another visit!

Sadie and Marcial

Still, it was satisfying that my Spanish is improving enough to converse as I managed to do that night. But Layne and I have begun a new system for learning Spanish --  “language dinners” with our Tico friends Marcial and Sadie. Sadie wants to learn English so it seems a good fit for us to get together and speak our different languages over a good meal. Layne and I hosted our first evening “class” last Thursday and it was a grand success. Marcial served as our “teacher” due to his fluency in English gained from teaching physical education at an English-language school for some eight years. Over guacamole and big bowls of chili, we alternated English and Spanish, with Marcial correcting us and offering grammar rules here and there. Sadie made homemade tortillas in a matter of minutes that were so much better than the packaged kind. And Marcial, who plans to compete in the big Chili Cookoff next month, was impressed with my chili recipe, which I had adapted to incorporate his wonderful Italian Sausage as the meat. We plan to repeat these dinners every two weeks or so and “poco a poco,” little by little, I know our Spanish will improve even as we have a lot of fun learning it. 

Christmas Day in Atenas

With sunny blue skies and a light breeze blowing, Christmas Day in Atenas was celebrated by many families in the Central Park where the Fuerza Policia (local police) had set up their awning and were handing out food and gifts to the kids. There were trampolines and music and a clown to entertain. A totally festive scene with many smiling children running to and fro.

Meanwhile, Layne and I met up with friends for a relaxed afternoon at the lovely home of Glynn and Darlene, feasting on cheese and crackers, chips and dips, wine and some delicious chili made by Leonard. The hit of the day was Sally's outrageous chocolate drops made with Oreo cookies and cream cheese! Holy waistline!

Happy Holiday Party Time!

Happy Holidays to all my loyal readers! I hope your holidays are blessed with joy, good friends and beloved family and that the New Year brings you prosperity, peace and good health.

Flowers on our fence

We are in full-blown Christmas party mode here, imagining that the sunny skies and warm temperatures actually harbor snowflakes and icicles. If you delight in fall colors, winter snows and spring blossoms, Costa Rica may not be the place for you. Well, the spring flowers certainly burst forth, but oddly that happens here during what is North America’s winter season. Since the end of the rainy season a few weeks ago, colorful blooms have sprouted everywhere and the trees are neon green with new leaves and flowers, promising abundant fruit just weeks from now. So it’s Christmas in Springtime here in Costa Rica.

A beautiful couple, Sadie & Marcial

Daniel, Sadie, Marcial and David, neighbor dog Bean

This week has been party central for us. Thursday night we enjoyed grilled sausages at Marcial and Sadie’s home a few blocks from us, celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. We sat around a small campfire they have in their yard and listened to their son Daniel play his guitar. It was a really fun evening and made Layne and I nostalgic for all the cozy wood fires we used to enjoy in California winters. On Friday afternoon there was a community party honoring senior citizens of Santa Eulalia and our neighbor had invited us. With a clown to entertain and some tasty pork stew for sustenance, the elderly crowd seemed to enjoy themselves. Layne and I were tested on our ability to follow instructions in Spanish as we got picked along with several other couples for one of the playful exercises on stage. We held hands, then let go, hugged then released, touched cheek-to-cheek then backed off and finally we danced. Everyone was gifted with a small picture frame and lotion for the women and socks for the men.

Daniel serenades us

Today it’s a pool party at our Japanese friend Hisano Bell’s bed and breakfast down the hill in barrio Rio Grande. I’ve made a big pot of Italian Sausage Spaghetti Sauce with Marcial’s great sausage (do you see a pattern in our food these days?) for the potluck and look forward to some relaxing at poolside. Then tomorrow we’re off to our friends Glynn and Darlene’s place in Turrucares with local pals Sally and Leonard, Neil and Jackie and our sidekick Marc. New Year’s Eve will find us partying with our favorite realtors, Dennis and Gerardo of Pure Life Development, an event we’re looking forward to enthusiastically. These two guys, along with their office helper Nelson, are some of the nicest people we know here and they have been so helpful to us in our long house-hunt before finally settling here in Santa Eulalia. We know they will host a kick-ass party!

So we hope your holidays are as full of fun as ours are and that 2012 brings Pura Vida to your doorstep! 

Good Friends, Gourmet Food and Golf!

Tico chefs

What a whirlwind of activity, travel and parties the last two weeks have been for us! It’s hard to know where to start on our various adventures. There was Francis and Brian’s excellent backyard party mentioned in my last post. We enjoyed dancing to the live music and nibbling on our friend Marcial’s delicious Italian sausages, grilled to perfection by a couple of happy Ticos, plus chicken, veggies, beer and wine. Lots and lots of wine! We met so many of our Santa Eulalia neighbors and several hours into the event, Daniel, my publisher from The Costa Rica News (TCRN), joined us at the festivities. After the music ended and we were satiated with food and wine, Daniel and Layne and I returned to our house for another hour of convivial chat. Oh, and more wine.

Earlier this week we joined a crowd of expats at Mark and Nancy’s lovely home in Guacimo where we enjoyed more good food and wine and made lots of new friends. Then last night we taxied into Atenas with Marcial and his lovely wife Sadie to Colinas del Sol for a wine tasting party featuring the excellent imports of our friends Shannon and Rolando along with delicious appetizers from the restaurant and Marcial’s great sausages again. We saw so many friends there, including our dear former landlords Odie and Eduardo and our former upstairs neighbor Linda. It was a festive evening!

But the high point of recent days was undoubtedly our visit to Hacienda Pinilla, a stunning 4500-acre beach resort and residential community near Tamarindo in Guanacaste province on the Pacific Coast. If you think the place looks nice on their website, you should see it in person. The long-time owner, a North American from Georgia, has developed the property with a commitment to keeping as much of the land and beaches natural and environmentally pristine as possible. They plant thousands of trees each year, preserve acres and acres of the land in its original condition and in many ways, encourage ecological practices in the hotel, the restaurants and in the building practices used in new construction.

The Beach Club

Our bedroom 

Recycling at La Posada Hotel, Hacienda Pinilla

A mention of golf in my column in The Costa Rica News some months ago led to our visit. Their charming young sales director Cynthia apparently read my article, then contacted me and offered a complimentary stay so that we could experience their golf course and other amenities first-hand. How’s that for a stroke of good fortune?

Putting on the 15th hole

And speaking of strokes, I think the Adams Golf clubs that Hacienda Pinilla loaned us for our round took at least a stroke per hole off my game. I was hitting them long and straight. Although I prefer my own Cobra driver (which is, unfortunately, in a bag in Portland, Oregon, at the moment), I really liked the hybrid 5-iron for fairways shots. Over and over, I turned to that club for distance and accuracy. I was also pretty wowed by the putter, which helped me get a par three from a lie just off the green probably seven yards from the cup. Between the broad open fairways and smooth true greens of Hacienda Pinilla and those Adams clubs, I almost felt like a “real” golfer. And when we came to the spectacular oceanside 15th hole, we could imagine what it’s like to play Pebble Beach.

After golf we returned to our big, comfortable suite and were delighted to find a bottle of champagne and birthday greetings for Layne, courtesy of Cynthia, since Saturday the 10th was his big day. Later that evening we enjoyed sipping the bubbly as we gazed up at a full moon above. So romantic!

Then there was the food. Oh. My. Goodness. Gourmet hardly tells the tale. As usual when faced with a huge selection of appetizing options, making the decision of what to eat at each meal was the hard part. Although a tough choice, I’d say my favorite was the Herb-crusted Tuna with Ginger-Basil Aioli that I had at lunch at the Beach Club the first day. It was just delicious. Layne took the chef’s recommendation, Garlic Sea Bass, also excellent. We both so enjoyed the Fried Calamari appetizer with its delicate batter and spicy dip that we had it again the second day.

The Conchal Hotel pool 

Simon and Hilda

When we reluctantly left Hacienda Pinilla, we drove north about forty-five minutes to the tiny beach town of Brasilito and spent the night at the Conchal Hotel, a charming little boutique lodge just a short walk from funky Playa Brasilito, Run by a delightfully low-key couple, Simon and Hilda, it was the perfect place to unwind and relax after the busy two days at the resort. And while we thought the food was good at Hacienda Pinilla, we were simply amazed at the fabulous fare at the Conchal’s cozy Papaya Restaurant. Chef Hilda serves a marvelous array of gourmet seafood and vegetarian dishes. Our one night there was not nearly enough to enjoy all the area offers; we certainly hope to go back soon for a longer visit.

So now we’re home and trying to settle back into our routine, with the feria tomorrow morning, the organic market on Saturday and my TCRN column due next week. But we made enough memories in the last week to sustain us for a while. Pura Vida!

December = Springtime in Costa Rica

What a thrill! We had a Blue Morpho butterfly flutter through our backyard yesterday afternoon. What a gorgeous creature it is with its iridescent azul upper wings. A friend said that the butterflies are returning in force now that springtime is here and the rainy season is mostly over. That’s good news for us as we love watching the amazing variety of mariposas here in Costa Rica. Of course, the visiting Blue Morpho was gone so fast I had no time for a photo so I’ll just “borrow” one from the Internet.

There was no problem identifying the fellow as we recently visited the Butterfly Farm in La Guácimo when our friend Marcy was here and learned all about the Blue Morpho as well as many other types of butterflies and moths. Although there are numerous such facilities in Costa Rica, this particular location not only breeds and cares for butterflies, from caterpillar to chrysalis through their magical transformation into beautiful winged fliers, but they also export the embryonic form, the chrysalis, all over the world to botanical gardens, other butterfly farms and nature centers. It was extremely educational and quite a treat to have the lovely creatures light on our clothes or arms.

Another wonderful feature of our new neighborhood are the incredible sweet flower smells that arise in the late afternoon and evening. I have located the source of the odors, in the white flower boles of tall plants nearby but a Google search failed to turn up the name of this tree. Every evening lately at about five o’clock, the air is filled with a rose-and-jasmine fragrance that just takes your breath away it’s so sweet. I’m led to believe that the smell attracts nighttime pollinators, such as bats and moths.

We seem to be blessed with some of the best of Costa Rica’s flora and fauna here in Santa Eulalia, including a young raptor we spotted in a tree on our latest walk. Then there was the three-foot long iguana I spied waddling along across the street today as we waited on the bus with some of our neighbors. I pointed him out to the others but no one was concerned. Just part of the local color. Welcome to Costa Rica. Ho-hum.

December marks the one-year anniversary of my trip back to California last year to put my dear horse and good friend Mojave down. After a very intense and poignant dream about him a few days ago, I have appreciated even more some of the horses that live nearby, such as this little yearling colt. He lives alone, it appears, in a large pasture down the road from us, and when we approached his enclosure he trotted eagerly over to say hello. I think he’s a bit lonely as he was most appreciative of my brief affections and followed us along the fence line when we turned to go.

Coffee plant Christmas tree - click on to enlarge

Much of Santa Eulalia is agricultural with acres of edibles nearing maturity. The coffee plants seem primed for the Christmas season, ripe red berries suspended like so many ornaments. Papaya trees are heavy with fruit and the feathery flowers of the sugarcane dance in the wind. Peanuts are laid out on canvas tarps to dry in the sun and our own naranja (orange), mandarina and limon trees are filled with fruits. 

Field of Papaya

Preparing peanuts for market

Add to that the many friends we have made here and you can understand our contentment. And if we needed anything more to please the senses, we got it on Thursday at new amigos Francis and Brian’s jam session. With Francis on keyboard and singing, local musician Barry on saxophone and young Daniel on guitar, Layne and I added our vocals on several songs as we all whiled the afternoon away. 

Tomorrow we’ll visit them again for a huge neighborhood party they are hosting to celebrate the sale of their southern Indiana property. We’ve found a good spot here in Santa Eulalia! Pura Vida!