Friday 29 July 2016

Rainy season reigns - Central America


A couple of posts back we said we would reveal the benefits of visiting Central America in the rainy season .... May to September.  And there are many, mostly in the form of tropical fruit and vegetables.  This is the season when the mangoes, coconuts, papayas, pineapples, rambutans, bananas, plantains, avocados and many more fruit and vegetables thrive.  And boy, did we enjoy the benefits.

When we first arrived in Panama we collected lots of mangoes and coconuts from the roadside and the beach and made the most amazing breakfast smoothies by just adding frozen bananas.

This lovely bunch of bananas we purchased from a roadside
stall for 5c per banana
Banana tree on our yard in Costa Rica.  They
typically produce 50+ bananas per bunch
then that plant dies and another takes its place

Talk about keeping us 'regular'!
 James made tostones out of some plantains - double fried and flattened fritters

Plantains look just like bananas, especially the plants
but the fruit are much bigger and fatter

Astrid and Pete's avocado tree was so abundant that we nearly got sick of eating them .... well, not quite but we did enjoy them with every meal for a time there.  We also discovered they kept there flavour frozen - mash and add some lemon juice then freeze.  Simple as that!

Mantequilla (spanish for butter) Avocados
One day we were walking around to get some avos from Astrid and found a tree overhanging the road so stopped to pick one up.  The lady of the house came running out with a plastic bag encouraging us to take as many as we wanted.  Don't think she could understand why we didn't take her up on the offer.

The fruit we were especially delighted to discover was the Rambutan (Maman Chino).  Our property in Costa Rica was covered in these trees and they were all coming ripe just as we arrived.  James had a fortuitous conversation with the local gardener taking care of the next door neighbour's yard and learned how to get the really high ones out of the tree using a very long bamboo pole.  Worked a treat!  We set about 'filleting' them on a regular basis and using them in smoothies or just eating a bowl for desert.  They release tons of really flavoursome juice.  
This Rambutan (Mamon Chino) tree outside our door provided hours of
entertainment watching and listening to the birds get busy
with them.  They seemed much more proficient at
harvesting than us
Rambutan and coconut water
 Papayas are not our favourite fruit, but we were surprised by a visual feast one day in the papaya tree on the edge of our deck in Costa Rica.  We had been waiting for the first one to ripen and had just been saying to each other that it was surprising none of the birds had shown interest.  Next minute .....
Two Fiery Billed Aracari helping
themselves!!!
Papaya from our tree in Panama.  We learnt that if you pick
them unripe (often necessary to get to them before the birds)
then you should slit the skin to release the milk/sap.
We had Pineapples growing in both Panama
and Costa Rica
A fruit bowl of Pineapple, rambutans and guava
Food glorious food ......

Clare got really good at making bread.  A necessary skill if you want to eat it in Central America.  The local bread is only passable.

Tuna steaks with pasta salad - avodaco dressing
Smoked chicken and salad - avocado dressing
Marmite all the way from NZ
And NZ chocolate
Homemade empanadas
Wild coriander growing in the lawn
perfect for curries


Tuesday 12 July 2016

Ah Panama ..... Part 2

 

Panama is a wealthy country compared to the rest of Central America.  Most of the wealth can be directly attributed to the Panama Canal.  It costs around US$500,000 to take a cargo laden ship through the canal!  This means that the infrastructure of the country is far superior to that of say Costa Rica.  You notice it straight from the border in the quality of roads and housing.  Apparently, the people living around us and on the way to the beach are all quite well off.  You don't notice it in a western sense, the houses are all fairly similar, nothing particularly flash.


 Life is fairly simple ... in a good way.  We did take a trip up to Boquete, in the mountains east of David, and noticed the difference in this mainly US expat community.  Some mighty big and flash houses.  They don't even speak Spanish up there anymore :-(  Places like that are not why we travel the world but is was interesting to see how the "other half" live.

Market day in Bouqete
The Panamerican Highway from our place to David has been undergoing reconstruction for the past three years and still has a year to go.  They are making it into a four lane highway which will improve the trip markedly when it is finally finished.  At the moment though, there is a lot of messing about, getting stopped and being moved onto the other side of the road with little or no warning.  This can be a little disconcerting as you just live in hope that the traffic coming the other way has remembered that they can only have one lane.  Panamanians drive like maniacs, passing on blind stretches of road and scaring the pants off us regularly.  But hey ho, here we still are.  It is best to plan your trip with a very early start and return during the lunch hour - Panamanians still stop for lunch breaks so the road is fairly free of stop/go guys.


So the jewel in the crown of the area is La Playa ... The Beach, about a 10min drive from home.

Road to the beach, green season
We have spent many an hour fishing, swimming, foraging for fruit and coconuts and generally exploring the vast length of white, sandy palm lined beach with the warmest water we have swum in for a long time.  As it is winter season, there are few tourists and we generally only have a couple of local dogs for company.  The beach didn't offer much up in the way of fish, lacking any land features for the fish to come to.  The locals net the river mouth at low tide but we never saw them catch anything there either.  We caught a few pompano, snapper, jacks, a stingray, snook and puffer fish.  All except the one snapper was returned to continue on life's adventure.

 
Mr Puffer fish not very happy!
We also enjoyed the odd beer at Sunset Beach Bar, recently set up by Michelle and Fulvio who have settled here from Italy.


For a week in June we enjoyed a visit from Clare's (81yo) Aunt from New Zealand.  Aunty Bev called in at the beginning of a 6 week adventure around Europe.  We had secured a housesitter for her gorgeous puss, Lexus, from one of the NZ housesitting sites to give her piece of mind while she was away.  It was a long journey for her to get here but she coped admirably with the dramatic change in climate suffering only with a mild dose of jetlag.  She also brought some "supplies" from home .... a jar of marmite, some Whitaker's chocolate and fishing and knitting gear.  It is very difficult to have stuff sent to Central America.  For a start, no-one has an address as such and there is no postal service outside the major cities.  You have to organise a carrier to drop off as someone's business or similar.

 

Didn't take long to get into the local swing of things
Bev also enjoyed the company of Reno and Dandy 
We suffered a minor disaster leading up to Bev's visit when two weeks beforehand the car broke down on the Panamerican highway.


Fortunately the insurance that comes with the vehicle includes a tow to wherever you require so we sat for a few hours in the heat of the midday sun and waited for a tow truck from David to rescue us.  And what a fine and helpful gentleman he was!  We had the car towed to the mechanic in San Felix as per instruction.  We were confident that two weeks was plenty of time to get it fixed in order to collect Bev from David and show her the sights.  Wrong!!!  There is one lesson you learn when trying to conduct business in this country.  No one can ever give you a straight answer about what is going on - seems the country is full of politicians!!!  To cut a very long and story short, the vehicle was out of action for nearly three weeks, taking the whole first week to try to get someone to even look at it.  In the end we had to go to David ourselves to collect the parts.  James would have torn his hair out over the whole saga if he had any!

The car broke down twice more during our time with it but fortunately James was able to diagnose and fix both problems himself, with a bit of help from this guy ......

The local auto-electrician rebuilding the starter motor  
It was unfortunate that during this period we also suffered a modem malfunction and had to get a new one installed.  Free of cost, but nevertheless, because of the convoluted way business is done here, this too dragged out way longer than necessary.  All of this business must also be conducted in Spanish.  We can both get by, James relying on his French (another Latin based language) and Clare from her time in Bolivia as well as having done a bit of Spanish study.  So together we can make ourselves understood  - sign language is a wonderous thing - and follow the general jist of a conversation.  Such is life ... it is all a learning process and we get lots of opportunity to use our problem solving skills :-)

We were fortunate enough to have made contact with an English/Swiss couple who have lived here for six plus years.  Peter has a dive business coibadreamdivers.com/about.html and Astrid sells delicious Indian take out meals from home - look for Hot and Spicy to Go on Facebook


 They were a great help to us during these trying times, not least of all for offering an insight into the "local" way of doing business.  We shared a few meals together, James helped Peter with maintenance on his boat and they took us fishing and snorkeling.  In fact James was able to tick this beautiful rooster fish off his global fishing bucket list on the first day out!  There was plenty of fish to feed us all for a while, and Astrid made a beautiful fish curry out of the last few pieces of it.



It is always fabulous to make friends like this in the local communities we find ourselves.