Costa Rica
To some degree, we’ve made it our sole job to always stay curious. Delays on the Ruta Nacional Primaria 32 to Limón would teach us about the growing infrastructure of Costa Rica’s road ways. Conversations and research into officials and government supported organizations such as the Asociación Nacional de Agricultura Orgánica would teach us about the conservatorship of certain plants, trees and entire areas across the country. Blogs such as Visit Costa Rica would help identity points of interest that would be high in tourism and local references. Costa Rica is beautiful and everyone who lives there knows it. There was an inspiring collection of biodynamic farms, permaculture in practice, forgotten and underutilized foods used in local communities in an almost entirely different national cuisine. Our aim was to help inspire a social and economic opportunity with the people of Costa Rica. We wanted to grapple with the issues of these rural communities and local farms and help conceive ideas, informed and inspired by the local peoples to imagine solutions to agriculture and trade that were aligned with their social values, their daily routines and their local capabilities. After weeks of conversations, and years of research and advisorship, we hoped to capture in this case study the unfaltering health and wellness culture that has been further primed in recent years of growing tourism and expat communities through the country. We threw ourselves into various local lives and routines, we were inspired by the diversity of Latin American people who called Costa Rica home, as well as grappled with the natural difficulties that diverse and displaced communities face. We found opportunity in perhaps Costa Rica’s most abundant and transformative resource which was fruit. Fruit in every direction, in every place for miles and miles to be seen. We tracked waste, collected testimonies from local farmers and educated ourselves around local species of foods that indigenous communities still use and hope that through further development and work with the locals of the country, we can play a pivotal role in transforming the opportunities in the current foundations and integrity of Costa Rican agriculture. To create a sustainable and ethical product, that can help support the upward economic mobility of the Costa Rican people, while setting the standard for equality and conservatorship of generational farmers and the inestimable nature of what they have to offer the world.
Nothing could have possibly prepared us for the extraordinary spectacles that Costa Rica had waiting for us. There are particular moments in our lives that we reflect on, ones where we are confronted by nature in such a profound way, that I personally began to feel like a liberation of sorts was upon us, or rather that we were finding peace in the idea that there are things in this world that we would never comprehend nor understand. Living in “Pura Vida” as we did felt like embarking on a journey with pirates. There was a profound trust, and almost haphazardness to our movements, to explore without consequence, which we could only truly have had the confidence to do because of the kindness that we were met with by the Costa Rican people. Every single corner of this country was for us overstated in stature and understated in its beauty. Our desire to come here was rooted in the search for a feeling, a process of un-encumbering ourselves from all the various comforts and ideas that wound us up so tightly back in our city lives, and to find something human on this planet, something to confide in, before realizing that day after day, it would become a feeling that we’d come to find in ourselves and could work to recreate back home. To live simply. This is what Costa Rica taught us. This was the transformative foundation that would have paved the way for all of our future work through these case studies. We began cooking from a fundamental and slow moving place. Chopping wood, building fires, cooking food. Preserving things, drying things, baking them under coals, frying them in fresh fat, doing whatever we could with the most simple collection of resources. We were for those 6 weeks, moving with the most transformative freedoms imaginable, and the results of which have been life changing enough for us to give ourselves entirely to this work, and hope that these experiences can call to others and encourage them to explore themselves, and borrow from the culture of others, these ideas and principles that would make their time in the world even more remarkable and beautiful.
As we arrived in the central valley of Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose gave us the opportunity to unearth the Costa Rica that the locals would give praise to. With some form of early enigmatic communication we were able to articulate our exploratory desires among locals; coffee bar baristas, parking attendants, security guards, police officers, shop keeps, counter people at the gym, the guys at the carwash and most importantly, uber drivers and restaurant owners would all help us chart the national identity of Costa Rica’s landscape and country, barraiding us with small villages, national sites, farms and other points of interest to explore during our time there. Most importantly, we found ourselves exploring the national identities of Costa Rican food through various community eating places (I refrain from calling these institutions a restaurant out of respect). On a trip several years ago to Cuba, my family and I stopped in a little village called Matanzas on our way to Havana from Camaguey. We were lifted from an outdoor market by a vivacious character named Dario, who conceived me and my other 12 or so family members to join him across the street at his home, where his mother and sister would cook us lunch. Dario described their eating institution in English as a “palatal” meaning having to do or referring to the palate. I don’t know if this is understood anywhere through Latin America as the term for a supper club, or community kitchen, but both this term and the experience of the food we ate, served and cooked from native hands, had perhaps the most profound impact on my cooking. I spent days of investigative research and interrogation collecting the myths of these kinds of home kitchens throughout the country of Costa Rica, and arrived at our first meal somewhere near Santa Ana just outside of Central San Jose. Gastronomic favor gave us an english speaking driver that day, who we without hesitation invited to lunch, as he carefully scaled the flooding narrow streets to Mayito Rancho. A wooden, more or less open-air structure stood at the end of a long driveway between other residential homes, in a back alley that no one without a mission could find. Parrots flew between the erect beams that kept tin roofs above us in place, the outside suffered a heavy rain as we found a table nestled under hanging artifacts and close enough to smell the open fire cooking that was eminative from the kitchen and its cooks. The backdrop, a jungle. The owner and patron himself, Mayito would serve us his home brewed beer (which was outstanding) along with roasted pieces of pork, chicken and beef, some cooked in fat over large iron drums hanging above a fire chimney made from concrete blocks stacked (and unsecured) over one another. Other items would come sizzling off the wood plank fired grills themselves. There was a harmony to every plantain, every bean, rice, salsa and yuca. It was the kind of cooking that shook you inside, like eating at someone else's childhood. It was a precious exchange for us before we sipped back the most glorious Costa Rican coffee, exchanged stories with Mayito and his early career beginnings as a truck driver, before being transformed by his knowledge and experience of the Costa Rican country and its road ways. We knew we wanted to explore Mayito’s country, and cook Mayito’s way. It was only a day after we settled with these impressions when we decided where we would start.
One white toyota four runner, 2 bags of medium luggage, 1 small machete, and a car seat for a small dog (thank you Away Luggage) and we’d begin off, driving through the lush forests of La Paz above San Jose on our way to meet an organic pineapple farmer in Heredia near Bajos de Chilamate. Between the surreal highway of the Ruta Nacional Secundaria 126 and the occasional fruit vendor on some random bluff, selling the most incredible papaya fruit to be imagined, we’d be pummeled by drums of pouring rain, occasionally terrorized as our car swept left and right across the highway, and admitted in this moment that Costa Rica was worth dying for. There were other short breaks to eat arroz pinto, and take photos of the occasional grazing cow in its stoic glory. It was only until we arrived at the pineapple farms of Organic Paradise Tour where everything from there on felt unimaginable. We were trusted to freely roam the farm, only after we were given cups of the sweetest pineapple juice and fruit. The cactus sheet of endless pineapple plants and the crown of their beautiful heads was only ever interrupted by profound sun breaks in the clouds and the watch for random snakes as the dog freely roamed the grounds. We’d see our first perspective of Costa Rican permaculture, taste fresh peppercorns from the vines growing upwards towards the sky on whatever surface they could latch themselves onto. We took a handful of fresh fruit and our speechless bodies and drove westward for Upala before the night quickly took us and gave us yet another beautiful but terrifying drive into the jungle black.
We’d arrive after several circles around a beaten down grove that would give way to broken rocks used as a means to define a driveway. After several minutes of driving to the hum of “someone is going to fucking murder us here” we found our jungle bungaloo outfitted with as much protection from the elements and nature as you would expect from a burnt down house. The charming home of two school teachers who hosted us for a few nights would soon turn into a hostage situation as jungle monkeys would sling onto the roof, creating as much noise, banging and ruckus imaginable before realizing that the dog might be a desirable item in these parts. The sleepless night would open up to scenes from the terrace of the most beautiful things I've ever seen with my eyes. We were in the lush heart of the rainforest, tapering on the edge of the national park for the Tenorio Volcano. In the cottage garden, a small furnace stove stood with a sink and a tin canopy covering overhead. We spent the day running errands in the region, collecting local vegetables, fruits, legumes and whatever else we could put our hands on to help us piece together the dishes and methods that were beginning to define our understanding of Costa Rican food and culture. The morning ahead of our cooking, we stumbled upon a chocolate farm, where panela and coffee also grew throughout the diverse terrains that spilled over across rivers and into the lush mountains ahead. For hours our mouths were filled with the sweet and sour fruit of the cacao, which was described to us as I remember it through my less that decent kitchen-Spanish, as something resembling a corn plant, where each individual fruit in the pods are not exactly the same, and that they even discern further between color and flavor in each new fruit and tree. By the afternoon there was a reasonable ability between us to discrete from the various varieties and flavors. We’d learn about sacha inchi and camu camu and the various health benefits behind indigenous and underutilized ingredients. We’d discuss health regimes with the generational farmers and the nutraceutical apothecary that was embedded in the natural environments of Costa Rica. We brought home chocolate, sugarcane, fresh cacao, plantains and foraged sea salt. After an hour-long attempt to start a fire with a palm leaf amid the humid airs of thick jungle forest, we began cooking through dishes such as Olla de Carne, a hearty beef and vegetable soup that I loved eating in the market stalls of San Jose during my first visit to Costa Rica. As the soup bubbled, the fire gave way to roasted peppers being cooked for the steak and onion mixture known as Lomo Saltado. As we lost light quickly, I’d swiftly be moving between smoke and fire, the knife and board, making shrimp ceviche, pico di gaillo, chifijo, chorreadas, arroz con pollo and patacones. Everything about the way we started cooking from this small jungle bungalow, and quality behind these dishes, when the ingredients are supernatural and the process and technique holy sacred, it gave us the appreciation we needed for the countries food, where some would say it's lacking for any reason, we found it to have every essential pleasure to be celebrated from a cuisine.
Both unmurdered and with dog still in hand, we moved south in the Nicoya Peninsula, maybe heading towards something near Santa Rita. We found another drama, scaling the dirt roads up to the bluffs of a mountain, completely sucked in by fog. Our next staystation hung off the edge of the creeping forest that met us on our perch overlooking Corozal. With lessons learnt, we waited for the dark, sitting underneath more godsent tin on our balcony as a storm moved towards us with some serious speed. Within a few minutes a heavy fog and mist would creep up from the bluffs of the mountain forest to meet us at our perch, a home hanging off the sides of some dusty cliff overlooking the Nicoya Peninsula. The late-afternoon light would be sucked away into the forming body of some monstrous rainstorm, rolling anxiously. And for the rest of the evening, bugs would take to sleeping as the jungle animals would whisper and laugh amongst the trees, and it would all be lit up by some silhouettes made from lightning and thunder. The rains smacked down heavily on our little tin roof through the night.
We’d arrive after several circles around a beaten down grove that would give way to broken rocks used as a means to define a driveway. After several minutes of driving to the hum of “someone is going to fucking murder us here” we found our jungle bungaloo outfitted with as much protection from the elements and nature as you would expect from a burnt down house. The charming home of two school teachers who hosted us for a few nights would soon turn into a hostage situation as jungle monkeys would sling onto the roof, creating as much noise, banging and ruckus imaginable before realizing that the dog might be a desirable item in these parts. The sleepless night would open up to scenes from the terrace of the most beautiful things I've ever seen with my eyes. We were in the lush heart of the rainforest, tapering on the edge of the national park for the Tenorio Volcano. In the cottage garden, a small furnace stove stood with a sink and a tin canopy covering overhead. We spent the day running errands in the region, collecting local vegetables, fruits, legumes and whatever else we could put our hands on to help us piece together the dishes and methods that were beginning to define our understanding of Costa Rican food and culture. The morning ahead of our cooking, we stumbled upon a chocolate farm, where panela and coffee also grew throughout the diverse terrains that spilled over across rivers and into the lush mountains ahead. For hours our mouths were filled with the sweet and sour fruit of the cacao, which was described to us as I remember it through my less that decent kitchen-Spanish, as something resembling a corn plant, where each individual fruit in the pods are not exactly the same, and that they even discern further between color and flavor in each new fruit and tree. By the afternoon there was a reasonable ability between us to discrete from the various varieties and flavors. We’d learn about sacha inchi and camu camu and the various health benefits behind indigenous and underutilized ingredients. We’d discuss health regimes with the generational farmers and the nutraceutical apothecary that was embedded in the natural environments of Costa Rica. We brought home chocolate, sugarcane, fresh cacao, plantains and foraged sea salt. After an hour-long attempt to start a fire with a palm leaf amid the humid airs of thick jungle forest, we began cooking through dishes such as Olla de Carne, a hearty beef and vegetable soup that I loved eating in the market stalls of San Jose during my first visit to Costa Rica. As the soup bubbled, the fire gave way to roasted peppers being cooked for the steak and onion mixture known as Lomo Saltado. As we lost light quickly, I’d swiftly be moving between smoke and fire, the knife and board, making shrimp ceviche, pico di gaillo, chifijo, chorreadas, arroz con pollo and patacones. Everything about the way we started cooking from this small jungle bungalow, and quality behind these dishes, when the ingredients are supernatural and the process and technique holy sacred, it gave us the appreciation we needed for the countries food, where some would say it's lacking for any reason, we found it to have every essential pleasure to be celebrated from a cuisine.
We moved from the Nicoya Peninsula across the province of Guanacaste to the pacific coast. We explored Limon, Tamarindo, Nosara, Garza, Samara and other small towns. Beyond anything worth mentioning other than the beauty of these small places, and an occasional fried fish and cold beer, was that seeing both the tourist/expat communities, with their development projects, their excavation of people and things, I grappled hard with experiencing these local communities that were hidden just beneath them. And I’m not making any observations other than that the way that nationals lived there could only have looked and felt as dismal as it was because the integration of that community was lifted from the place that they've historically been in, and were now placed up in the hills of somebody's else's disinterest. That there are right ways to build new communities and it starts with people first.
We returned back east, hugging the Colorado Gulf, until we arrived in the port town of Puntarenas, we were out of season tourist, and every gaze and stare from these local citymen reminded us of that. We explored what felt like an untouched community, bewildered by the social conventions of these local fishing communities, it was perhaps the most beautiful town we saw throughout the whole trip, and inevitably we found more fried fish (snapper in this case) along with ice cold bottles of Imperial and delicious shots of chiliguaro made with guaro, a moonshine distilled from sugar canes, lizano which was the closest thing we’ve seen to a national condiment for any country, sour orange (and or lime juice), onions, red peppers, chili and cilantro. One overnight stay back in San Jose and we were off trailing the other half of unexplored country.
With hours of delay and detour, we finally arrived in Limón. We were shaken by the miles of Dole plantations and export factories we found along the way, the epicenter of which leading us to San Carlos on the foothills of Volcano Arenal. We spent the next few weeks under the Caribbean and islander influences of towns like Manzanillo, Puerto Viejo, and Puerto Vargas. A remote jungle bungalow near Hone Creek would give us access the these cities, exploring local cuisine, much of it informed by the outstanding cooking at La Casita de Monli where both the local produce and the purist pursuits of daily caught fish and hunted game came together in a culinary expression which rightfully won this establishment their green Michilin star, awarded for outstanding sustainability and both ethical and environmental standards. Sopa de Mariscos al Coco would come to be an unforgettable memory, along with Stewed Curried Rabbit and succulent planks of seared swordfish and tuna. We’d see in Puerto Viejo what we didn’t on the Pacific side of Nosara, which was a closer integration of communities. There was an adaptive nature to the standards of living in these more tropical towns. Black sands, excellent reefer, and a health centered consciousness throughout the entirety of the towns people. We spent the best days for both our body and mind, enamored by the ingenuity and “easy living” of these townspeople. Though nothing in life or about living is ever easy. A confrontation with a dying armadillo reminded us of the fragility of life and the natural word, “Dill-Pickle” as we named him, seems to have been run over by a car. Holding this beautiful fading creature in a cradle blanket before he parted also reminded us about the gravity of displacing and integrated human infrastructure into these existing natural communities. We became even more grateful for the fresh fruit stand on the playa, the warm waters of the ocean, the hot kiss of the sands, and the almost afterlife-like standard of living that these locals had designed for themselves. Street market corners (and very random dug outs on road sides) would become temporary homes for jerk chicken and gallo pinto. One particular vendor would attract a crowd on Ruta Nacional Secundaria 256, and would run out of his offerings within the first 5 minutes he was serving, getting to around 50 people or so before the hour-long wait began for more freshly grilled chicken. I personally had no intention of waiting in this line, so I bought the man and his wife a fresh coconut juice in a non verbally stated exchange for the first hot chicken off the grill. That shit was insane. The perfect jerk; sweet, smokey, salty, spicy - we were flavor rolling. We found a small dry docked boat (it was baby blue) and took a cafeteria table squat across the seat plank, my partner and I knee to knee, as we briefly stared across at the next guy watch the other devour unreasonable amounts of chicken and rice.
With as much experience as we could afford to carry, and with my partner in the sick raging grapples of Norovirus, likely from an empty tank of water we were exposed to during one of our last stays, we decided that it was time to go home and reflect, and collect what remained of us after what felt like a proper lifetime in Costa Rica. I stand for what you eat over who invented it. I care about the ingenuity of ceviche made with local fish, the versatility of pico de gallo and the many places it's seen throughout Latin and South America. But perhaps the most important thing that we came back to, and will always come back to are these strong feelings of humanity and benevolence. The ones that make friends in unexpected places, that have the aptitude to craft and share extraordinary facets of food, culture and living, and that everyday kind of kindness that turns the world in spite of all the conditions that humans often suffer and grieve through. We will always owe our delighted experiences in these travels to a handful of people who chose to meet our curiosities and eagerness half way, and tolerated more than a little of our unformed uses of their language. Though ultimately we returned humbled, constantly waking up before 6am for months, drinking better coffee, buying better fruits and becoming a closer version of ourselves that could finally grapple with the standards of health and happiness that Costa Ricans help define in us. To live Pura Vida, is to live beautifully, and what a truly beautiful life it was among the Rich Coast.