Expectations of a Savory Country

Costa Rica. This unique and highly visited country in Central America conjures bold images for backpackers and desk job day-dreamers alike. Visions a person sitting, plotting, planning or just daydreaming in an air conditioned office may have – particularly while reading blogs in such an office – may be a few of the most common images shown in your favorite travel magazine. Perhaps jungle and a river-cut landscape? If that is the case, let your mind wander to a place where the typical is spectacular.

Come with me to Sarapiqui, and see what it is that surrounds my office. For here the forest is full of trees whose leafy appendages greatly exceed the size of my very tall three year old niece. Some are round, and in their gigantic flatness seem as though they could be the shadow of the greatest pumpkin you have ever seen. Increasing the overwhelming area of foliage are the epiphytes, which grow high in the leaf litter that has accumulated along the heavy branches of the lower canopy. There are as many lively plants perched on the branches of the trees as there are shades of brilliant green. Some, like the strangler fig are hemi-epiphytes and throw their roots down to the ground, taking nutrients from the earth. The vine-like roots of the strangler fig will eventually kill its host tree through strangulation, called girdling, or simply out compete it for sunlight.

And what is there to be expected of night? When you contemplate closing your eyes or walking down the path with a headlamp, what is there to hear after dark when the howler monkeys have gone quiet and put themselves to bed? The screeching sounds of night are owned by insects and amphibians. The high pitched, pulsating sound made by the cicadas and tiny frogs (among a myriad of other creatures I have yet to know) compete with what I expect… the dreamer has yet to imagine. The carretera. Even in the night cars and freight trucks rip down the narrow two lane highway that divides the selva.

It is this reaching highway which allows the jungle to also be a neighborhood. It enables Sarapiqui to be easily and safely accessible, uniquely Costa Rica. The rumbling carretera, with its rapid 18-wheeled trucks and narrow shoulder, is the only true danger in Sarapiqui.

Far less frightening is the ever evolving river at out backdoor. The Sarapiqui ranges from class I – class V, depending on time and location, however behind us it is the changing face of a class II / III. I have seen it run a turbid brown after heavy rains, and listened to the calm ripples call to me on a hot day. It is olive green to sky blue, and almost always chopped with white ripples which expose rocks or debris. Just as the guide books say, it is fast, delivers adventure, and on the river the guides are trust worthy and skilled.

Many people travel to Costa Rica for the outdoors; the lush, easily accessible jungles, navigable rivers, and with luck a zipline view of the tropics. If this is your desktop image of Costa Rica, I wonder, do you also fantasize about the food?

Are images of rice and beans and plentiful plantains dancing through your head? Does your mouth water, or do you wonder how many granola bar wrappers line my waste-paper bin? Maybe you’d pack a pizza, because in this quaint bit of jungle, carved out only by river and carretera, there are no fast food joints.

Think again. Go onto the patio and fill it with a rudimentary but highly functional kitchen. Fridge, sink, stove, and countertops meant to be labored on. This is Doña Hilda’s kitchen and where the Sarapiqui cooking classes are held. Technically it does not belong to Doña Hilda, but to me it holds the fascination, danger and amoré of a grandmother’s kitchen. Meet a broad and grinning woman who feeds worthy visitors not with gnocchi, but with sizzling patacones, empanadas, and delicious guacamole. Think of tasting freshly strained juice, the watermelon so sweet, and the cook so giving that you are whisked from stress, technical difficulties and mosquitoes, to a place of calm, of home, and of family.

In Sarapiqui mighty appetites are satiated – for a little while.

-Shala Racicky
May 2010