Day 25 Eating from a tropical garden

It’s pretty easy to eat well here when there is fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs for the picking but the grocery store is a drive away. At the tiny local grocery store, the staples costs more than you might expect and there is no such thing as pre-prepared food. All of this means that meals tend to be simple and close to their source. Almost everything is organic and local with free range eggs coming from Karen and Mike’s just down the road,

yogurt and cheese from Tad and Cook’s cows one town away, and the fish we have regularly enjoyed from the fishing village at Playa Bejuco, a nice walk down the hill.  I have bought tomatoes, garlic, and onions from the store but almost everything else has come from the land here. Marie grows pineapples, coconuts, starfruit,

Starfruit or Carambola as it is known locally

oranges, a few types of limes, bananas, mangos and mangas (yellow honey mangos in the States), papayas,

Papaya tree

and there is a community grapefruit tree next to Patty and Bill’s house that provides the neighborhood with sweet, fat grapefruits. In addition to all that fruit, she grows two types of tropical spinach, a cooking green called Chaya, two types of salad greens (one looks like a bush and one is a small tree) and all sorts of herbs from tropical cilantro, to spicy basil.
Hank and Marie’s worker, Mai has turned a small hill down near the quebrada into a bean patch. He is growing hundreds of bean plants that will provide his family with red beans for the entire year, once they are picked, shelled and dried. Here are some plants that he harvested so we could make gallo pinto (red beans and rice). Since the beans were fresh, they took only about twenty minutes to cook and yes, they were delicious.

Red beans in their shells

Day 24 Painting in Paradise

Painting in paradise sounds wonderful in theory but is difficult in practice; there are just so many distractions! Exotic birds call needing to be photographed and identified, the beautiful beach always beckons, and then there are friends like Wendy asking if I am maybe interested in hiking up to a new waterfall or looking for turtle hatchlings or something equally interesting.
Then back at home there are still daily chores: dishes and laundry which can hardly be considered work when you have the view that the kitchen sink commands:

And then it’s pretty fun to harvest something for breakfast, which means finding it first in the gardens that fall away in each direction from the house.

I have managed to work however, and have designed several large paintings and painted a large composition which is 36” wide and 12 feet long. Unfortunately, I lost most of my dyes on the flight down when they leaked at altitude from their little containers. Fortunately, I had triple wrapped them so none of that intense dye escaped into the interior of my suitcase, but I was left with precious little to actually apply to the silk. I did manage to finish these kois before the jars ran dry.

Day 23 The Estero at Camaronal

Signpost at Playa Camaronal

Wendy and Tom, checking out the surf

This morning, while Tom and Wendy surfed the world renowned break at Playa Camaronal, I went exploring in the Rio Oro. Exploring an estero by foot at daybreak is a wonderful thing. Everything is waking up and golden. Little blue herons and sandpipers patrolled the shallows and the fish slapped the water leaping for a breakfast bug. Little crabs popped into their burrows as I approached.

I followed a narrow fishing trail that wound through the trees following the curving river. Just as I was about to turn back, I saw a bit of pink on the river ahead: a roseate spoonbill, one of my favorite birds in Costa Rica! They are very shy so I snuck up on it as best I could while getting mired in the mud of the river bank. I got a few pictures from far off before it spotted me and flew off.

As I turned around to head back, I saw movement on the opposite shore which I recognized as an otter. Later access to a field guide identified it as a neotropical river otter which is endangered in Costa Rica and rarely seen. A lucky and appreciated sighting!
I returned to the beach and spotted two pairs of footprints in the sand which were the only ones there besides mine. Tom and Wendy had come to find me, turned back and surfed a second set. I rejoined them for a refreshing swim in the waves before heading back home for breakfast. It was only 8:00am.

Tom, post surf 

Day 22 Monteverde Cloud Forest

The most visited national park in Costa Rica is the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve which is located in the north central part of the country and straddles the continental divide. Cloud forests are unique in that they exist at high elevations in tropical areas and are usually swathed in clouds so that the forest there is cool and almost constantly moist. Orchids wrap their roots around branches and trunks and bromeliads of every shape make the trees look like chandeliers. Vines and strangler figs create a primeval look so that if a dinosaur peered out from behind a giant buttressed trunk I don’t think I’d be too surprised.
Frogs, lizards and bugs of in all colors live here along with larger animals like monkeys, sloths and agoutis.  Tapirs and leopards and other exotic cats exist in the cloud forests but are rarely seen because of their rarity and secretive nature. The birds as you might imagine, also thrive there but are like the other animals hard to spot because of all of their foliage and the tendency for camouflage. We managed to see these tiny baby hummingbirds because a local guide pointed them out.

The highlight for me in this natural wonderland was a sighting of the Resplendent Quetzal which was among other things, the sacred bird of the Aztecs and kind of a holy grail to modern birders around the world. This bird is so spectacular that even while you are looking at it, it is hard to believe it’s real. You can see this boy’s green metallic helmet and wing coverlets laid over a bright scarlet cape but less evident are his 18 inch long twin tail feathers.

Once I saw the quetzal, I could have gone home—it’s that great of an occasion. Of course, we didn’t leave and continued to hike through the tangled jungle in the clouds.