Food! Glorious Food!

This is probably my favorite topic no matter where I am- food. I could seriously talk about food for hours! However, this blog is a condensed version of my experiences with Costa Rican food so far. I have already written a little bit about my encounters- the pizza in a bag, the Chinese chicken wings, and those aren't even all of them!

One of the best things about being in Costa Rica that there are so many opportunities to eat fresh fruits and vegetables! Many of the fruits we buy in the U.S. are actually imported from Costa Rica like bananas and pineapples. Yes, the summer fruits we get to eat in the United States are great. But wow. The fruits here are beyond comparison! I have had fruit with every breakfast and many lunches! Especially after coming from Arizona, the freshness is a real treat!

For the first few days, my mama tica served us a lot of "American" foods, as she was afraid that our stomachs needed to transition to Costa Rican food. However, now she is starting to feed us more "tican" foods like gallo pinto! Gallo pinto is a very common dish throughout Costa Rica, and is made of rice and beans, often with onions or chiles and spiced very nicely.

This past weekend I got the opportunity to travel to Puerto Viejo, which is a beautiful beach town planted right on the Caribbean sea. There we were able to do many cool things, like bike through the jungle and relax on the beaches with a view of the crystal clear blue sea. One thing that my friends and I noticed was that the lifestyle, even for meals, is very different in Costa Rica in comparison to in the United States. We went out to dinners and lunches while in Puerto Viejo, and each time it took about an hour to an hour and a half to get our food (for some groups it took longer)! Even when there weren't other groups that were eating, the whole restaurant process just lasted longer. This sort of meal experience wasn't a bad one; in fact I kind of enjoyed the relaxed manner in which we shared meals! However, it seems that in Costa Rica nothing needs to be rushed; people very much live by the idea of "pura vida".

I don't think I will be anywhere close to running out of new foods to try by the time I leave Costa Rica; in fact I think that I will only be scratching the surface of the bountiful flavors the have here! However, I look forward to trying new foods and getting more of a feel for the culture that comes along with meal shar
ing.