Holy Week

Holy Week (Semana Santa) is a really big deal around here!

In fact, Easter celebrating started way back with these empanadas. Semana Santa also meant no classes for a week at Roblealto, so that was the reason I could miss my Monday internship for this fabulous adventure. 

But to continue from there, I will start on Thursday...

One of the special things about Semana Santa is the food. We had already made our chiverre empanadas, but Lula was excited to have me experience other Holy Week food. One of those was a fried rice sort of dish with calamari and octopus. And shrimp. Sounds strange, I know. But it was delicious! If you think about it, deviled eggs are just as strange. And why the heck do we call them that? DEVILed eggs to celebrate Jesus' victory over death and Satan. That doesn't make sense. I was trying to explain these little North American oddities to Lula, and she couldn't get over the irony of the name. After lunch we made more empanadas. Like I said, food is important. Think Christmas and cookies, and you get the idea.

Thursday night was the mass commemorating when Jesus washed the disciples feet. During part of the mass the priest washed the feet of twelve guys representing the disciples who were sitting at the front of the church. And they weren't the only people sitting at the front. Can you guess who else? Maybe someone who came in with Lula, the woman who has no shame? That's right, yours truly. We came in to church late, and there was no seats to be had. She was leading, of course, and wanted to be sure that I could see, so she said we had to go to the front. There was a group of people sitting on the side steps, to the right of the alter and slightly further back. So she lead us to the center steps, directly in front of the alter, and closer to the congregation. Just in case you forgot, I am over six feet tall, and white. I'm glad I'm not also blond, because that would have just been to much. Needless to say, I'm pretty sure the entire town of San Rafael saw me during that mass.

After the mass was a procession. A statue of Jesus is carried on a float type thing, alter boys (alter servers to be more politically correct) swung incense, and all ages males (and one girl!) dressed up as Roman soldiers and walk through the streets. Side note, the flowers surrounding Jesus on the float were from Merce's florist shop, and Lula and I filled in all the greenery. I bit of my handy work got paraded around San Rafael!

On Friday, Jenny and Adam and the boys and our biology professor Bertie and her husband Jim came over for coffee. More traditional food here; Semana Santa tamales. They are very different than the Christmas type tamales we know, because they have no filling. It is just the tamale dough mixed with cheese and cooked like a regular tamales (a bit fatter) and then to serve it is sliced up and toasted. After coffee we went to another procession. This one just went around the block, circling the park, but it took two hours! No only was Jesus parading, this time in a display case type casket, but also Mary, and two disciples (Peter and John, I think, but that is mostly just a guess).

On Saturday afternoon there was another procession, right on our street. This is the procession that the pictures are from. Hollie, Kata, and Memo all came over for dinner that night, and we went to the candlelight mass after that. I wish I had taken a picture of that! Hollie, Kata, and I were all dressed up in nice black (they even had lovely high heels!) because Lula had told me that it was important to look nice, but somber. I had passed that message along, and Naty didn't tell us until we were on our way to mass that the "dress code" was actually more for Friday night. Being overdressed would have been that bad except that the mass lasted nearly four hours. That is a long time in heels! Sorry girls!

The beginning of the mass was beautiful, with all the candles and everyone passing the flame along down the aisles. Then the mass went on for the next three and a half hours. The most eventful part was the sprinkling of the holy water. The priest walked up and down the aisles dipping a branch into a big bowl of water and sprinkled the congregation. Although when he got to our row (of which I was right at the end) he must have thought I looked particularly sinful or something, because I got drenched. I knew it was coming, but all the same it was really hard to hold in the startled laughter. Nice big face-full of holy water. I was literally dripping. I hope that means I am particularly blessed.

Here are the pictures from the procession:

On Easter Sunday, after going to church multiples times all three days before, we actually didn't go to church at all. We had a picnic at the country club. It made for a strange, nontraditional (for me) but very enjoyable Easter. And Lula and I did go to mass in the chapel at the country club while Naty and Memo played tennis. The big highlight, though, was camp-fire-cooked meat. The fire was definitely a group effort, and we were all very proud of it.

It looks like Lula is roasting a piece of wood. Well, she kind of is. She wanted it to catch fire before she put it underneath the grate with the rest of the fire. Everyone has to please their inner pyro once in a while.

Cross photo from here.

Happy Birthday Javier!

My host cousin just had his 15th birthday last week, so we had an excuse for another family gathering!

Between when we got back from the Pacific coast trip and our journey to Manuel Antonio, I had exactly 24 hours at my house. So, I went with the fam to see a movie, to mass, and then to the birthday party-lunch. I think I slept a little in there somewhere as well.

Highlights:
-Joking around with the aunts (in Spanish, of course) and actually feeling like I knew what was going on and I could say what I wanted. Excito!
-The very sincere and heartfelt toasts everyone gave for Javier. It was really sweet to hear their birthday wishes for him. Especially one cousin, who said, "Hope you have a happy birthday." Kind of reminds me of a cousin I have in the states...
-A bunch of fat little puppies. Even though I'm not an animal person, I thought they were fun.
-Javier's Lightning McQueen birthday cake! Yes, I typed it correctly at the opening of this post. Fifteen.

Sister and Aunt helping to light the two candles

All the family and friends..that would fit in one photo that is.

Big sister birthday hug

Three very different reactions to "Say Cake!"

Alexandria enjoying her Cars cake

Third time's a charm (not that the others were bad)

That's right.

I went to the beach again.

Yes, three times in two weeks. I know. Crazy. 

But hey, I'm just making up for the almost two months that I was here before I had been to the beach at all.

Plus, who wouldn't go to a beach that looked like this!?

So, two weekends ago I went on this trip to the Caribbean, then this last Thursday through Saturday I spent at the Pacific. Then, just because I could (and actually because it was pretty much my only free chunk of time between now and when I leave) I went to Manuel Antonio.

Just to clarify, Manuel Antonio is a very famous and popular national park in Costa Rica, not some hansom Tico man like my family thought before I explained myself. 

Anyway, after less than 24 hours at home between trips, Lauren and Amy and I took off for Manuel Antonio. We got in around 10, and after quite a bit of confusion (all resulting from overlooking the second of the two doorbells) we finally got our room after 11.

The next morning we ate breakfast and headed out for a day on the beach. We walked down to the beach from our hostel, which was quite a trek, but we got some great views.

View from where we started

Yes, we were going down to that beach you can see in the distance in the above photo. I know, I know, its a long way. But we made it!

As you can see, the beach was well worth it!  We even found a nice little cove very sparsely populated. With people, that is. It was full of crabs. This semi-private beach made for a lovely place to spend the morning, playing in the waves, reading in the sun, and watching the crabs.

 The spray of the ocean on the rocks was gorgeous, and always such a relaxing sound! Unfortunately, we had to return to the other side of the beach since the tide had nearly covered the rocks of our escape route.

Hurray for the ocean!

We spent the afternoon bumming around in shops, walking on beach when there was beach to be had (at high tide the ocean comes right up to the mangroves) and eating delicious ice cream in this lovely beach front cafe.

Upon returning to our hostel (going up in bus. We aren't that dumb!) we watched the sun set into the ocean from the hostel's pool, made a very filling spaghetti dinner, and hit the hay.

The next morning, we tried to leave as soon as possible for the national park, since we were told the earlier you go, the better. Which is very true. When we arrived at 8.30 or so, there were so many tour groups all over the path, you couldn't hear anything but tourist chat. Since we were not with a guided tour, we wove our way through the groups until we were in front of them all, and then we started to really enjoy the park.We saw an iguana longer than my arm and about as fat as a cantaloupe, tons of smaller lizards throughout the park, two sloths, a plethora of beautiful butterflies (including a brilliant blue one as big as my face!) and two little wild pigs. Not to mention the monkeys. 

Those guys were a little crazy. They have absolutely no fear of people, whatsoever. One poor picnic-er had his giant bag of potato chips stolen right behind his back. The monkey took it right on up the tree with him, opened it like it was nothing, and ate his fill of chips. 

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself here....

So we got in front of the tour groups, and decided to take a gorgeous 45 minute hike up to a viewpoint overlooking the ocean.

This is part of the trail up to the viewpoint. All the trees there were so cool! 

 

Lauren and I, mid-hike (meaning very sweaty)

And this is the view from the top.

After we climbed back down from the viewpoint, we hit the beaches. One little hidden cove had great rocks to explore, but also a ton of rocks in the water, so we couldn't really swim. Although we did see a huge pelican up close and personal!

We then switched beaches, to the more populated and swimming friendly beaches on either side of the isthmus. This is were the monkeys were hunting. Here we played in the waves, read a little, and I took a turn around the peninsula, to see what I could see. And this is what I saw.

 

Aren't the trees awesome! We saw some other cool plants too. Like this spiral staircase kind of plant.

 

And this crazy vine.

We left the park mid-afternoon (wading with our bags on our heads since the tide had come in), grabbed another ice cream, and headed back to the hostel to gather our things and change. Then we went in to Quepos (the neared town) to kill a little time and catch the bus. Although we didn't. Catch the bus, that is. Not due to lateness or ill-preparedness or anything like that. It was just a lack of communication. We thought when the bus came it pulled into the bus station parking lot, and it turns out that it only passes on the road (which no one felt it was necessary to tell us when we asked about it). So, we went on a little detour, since there were no more buses direct to San Jose. We had to go all the way up to Puntarenas and then back down and inland to San Jose. About twice as long, but we made it. And really the trip as a whole was well worth it. 

Pura Vida!

Pacific Coast Time

Off to the beach again! This time to the lovely pacific side. Much hotter, with less rain and less green jungly feel, but still very enjoyable.

Shortly after we got back from the Caribbean Coast trip, just enough time to let our shoes and backpacks dry, we packed up again and headed for the mangroves in the Pacific.

It was a much shorter drive this time, so we got to the beach and went exploring in the mangroves before lunch.

There were two different types of mangroves that we saw. Mangrove basically just means a type of tree that can tolerate brackish (salt/fresh mix) water and live part of the time submerged. One type had these funny little antennae roots that stuck up out of the ground about six inches and helped the tree breath. it also "sweated" out the extra salt through its leaves.

Mangrove jungle-gym

The other tree sends out all kinds of nifty prop roots to help it stand up, and also to give a nice comfy home to a ton of crabs.

The easiest crabs to see had bright red claws and black shells, and would run across the roots of the mangroves. They were a little shy.

After paying attention for a few minutes, we notices that the shallow water at our feet was swarming with little hermit crabs, cruising around to their hearts content. Some fought with each other for shells, which made the future kindergarten teacher in our group feel sad for the poor bullied crabby. A few of the student were even able to do a crab re-location project for one little guy who was living in a sad little circle of bark for a home. They found him a nice empty shell...how nice.

One of the hermits

After exploring the beach a bit more, and finding a ton of cool sea shells, we headed back to the campus where we were staying. Bertie, our biology teacher, was nice enough to give us free time, so we spent noon to two (the most dangerous hours in terms of the sun...according to Lula) playing hearts and eating fresh mangoes from the trees outside.


At two, the magic hour when the sun can no longer burn you so it is safe outside, we headed back down to the beach to swim. We discovered that about ten yards out, the sand turned to incredibly slimy, squishy, strange-feeling mud. Lovely, right?

Pretty, isn't it? You'd never guess what lies beneath the surface.

A group of us ended up walking through this lovely mud, just for kicks, and it was quite pleasant. The water was perfect, there were nearly no waves, and as far as we could walk the water only ever got about chest high. (By the way, this wasn't open ocean, the coast of the northern peninsula was less than a mile away, so it was more like a bay.) One thing wasn't quite so pleasant, though...

Source

This sign shows pretty much exactly what went down. Except that my legs weren't strangely detached from my abdomen, gracias a Dios. While we were walking through the ocean, I felt was I at first thought was seaweed brushing across my knees. That impression only lasted about a half a second, and then I realized that this seaweed really hurt! It stung quite a bit, kind of like a whole bunch of ant bites in a row across the tops of my knees. But for a while I still wasn't sure it actually was a jelly, since I always though a jellyfish sting would be somewhat debilitating with all the fuss people make over it. Really, it wasn't that bad. And it didn't get worse, so I just kept walking. I had a nice red stripe across my legs for a while, but after an hour or so it didn't hurt any more. I'm sure there are more powerful and painful jellies, but this one wasn't any worse than bee stings really.

Moving on, after dinner that night we had a presentation about the mangrove forest, and then went down to the beach to have a bonfire. After very little success and nearly a full box of matches, we resorted to the bug-spray-flam-thrower method of lighting the fire. Quite exciting! And then feasted on some s'mores, Tico style (with Nutella instead of chocolate bars and Maria cookies, which a kind of like a Nilla wafer or animal cracker but flat and round) Yum!

The next morning we headed out to a town called Tarcoles to visit a fishing community. We heard presentations from several people who work in the artisan fishing coop, learned about different types of fish and mussels, and tried Chiviche, which is fish "cooked" in the acid of lemon juice, which peppers and herbs thrown in. Mouth-puckering-goodness!

In the afternoon we took a tour of the on-shore aspects of fishing, including where they clean and untangle the long strings of hooks, where they prepare the chum, and where they process the fish. While we were there, two divers brought in some of the biggest lobsters I have ever seen and two little octopus.After this, we went out in search of clams with a lady that has been gathering mussels and clams to feed her family for over fifty years. By following her example and digging through the rocks in the tide pools, I was able to find 13 of those delicious little things. We took them back to the office and cooked them up right then and there. Talk about fresh!

That night we spent with our host families. We went to a community soccer tournament after dinner, and then slept since we were all pretty exhausted.

The next morning we all went out in the little fishing boats with different captains. We saw how they put out the nets, and then used individual reels. I "caught" one little silver fish, in quotation marks because really the assistant captain (son of the captain) took my reel until he felt a pull, then told me to pull it in. So really, I can't take the credit.

After returning from the ocean, we lunched with out host families, and hit the road. The ride back was fairly uneventful, save for a ice-cream stop and spontaneous parking lot dance party that was filmed by at least two Ticos, and a inter-van rock/paper/scissors battle between me and another guy in another tourist bus. Good times.

Here are s'more photos...

Ready to explore the mangroves

The man in the hat volunteers to clean the beach.

Lindy and the Pacific

A crooked attempt at an artsy picture.

A very cool tree, right in the middle of the beach.

A dead fish friend. Careful not to step on them!

Easter Empanadas

On Monday, after returning from my day at Roblealto (if you don't know what I'm talking about, read this) my host sister and her friend Memo and I opened a "fabrica de empanadas." Our very own kitchen table empanada factory. 

There are tons of different versions of empanadas, here in Costa Rica and all throughout Latin America. I already learned how to make super delicious fried been and cheese empanadas, but this was my first sweet empanada making. Lula told me that the chiverre, a pumpkin/squash vegetable that looks sort of like a giant wantermelon, is very traditional for the Easter season. The filling of these empanadas is miel de chiverre (literally honey of chiverre), which looks kind of like apricot jam only darker brown and with strings (like pumpkin). It is super sweet, and quite good. 

To start off our factory, Naty, Memo, and I each got our stations set up with a folded up trash bag and a large knife. Then we measured out the ingredients for the dough onto the plastic bag. The dough is very simple, it just has:

3.5 cups of flour

2 sticks of butter

5 oz of cream cheese

Using our knives, we cut in the cream cheese first, then the butter when the cream cheese was well incorporated. Naty was very insistent that we not touch the dough with our hands, although she didn't know why. Just part of the recipe. 

We are using our knives and wondering why we can't use our hands.

Once you have everything all cut in, you squish it around (the correct term is probably knead) with the plastic until it forms a nice big ball of smooth dough.Then, surprise! you use your hands to roll little balls (ping pong ball size). Memo and I both got 35 out of our dough, but Naty made 41. She says that this means she won, but Memo and I think her empanadas are too tiny so it doesn't count.

Now hands are allowed

Next we pulled out the tortilla press and Memo smashed each one flat. Naty and I then filled the empanadas, using about a teaspoon of the miel de chiverre, folding them in half, and forking close the edges. 

 Using plastic bag circles on the press and during folding keeps the dough from sticking and tearing.

 To fold it over, you just lift the plastic bag, very easy and hassle-free.

Then we put the empanadas in any and every oven worthy container we had, and baked them at 350 until they were lovely golden brown. 

Even Sofie helped with some! And helped eat some, of course.

And there you have it! Delicious empanadas. Best about five minutes after they leave the oven, with a buttery flaky crust and a warm sweet filling. !Que Rico!