Have you any idea how cashew nuts grow and how ridiculously difficult they are to harvest?!?!?!
Take a look at this video to find out:
Fruit on the tree
Cashew Apple and Nut
Fully ripened and fallen from the tree
This nut is ready to process
Being the hunter gatherers that we are, we were most excited to see the Cashew Nut tree in our yard when we arrived in Panama. We dutifully took the photos above, to show you the process from tree to mouth. Then we read up about how to process them. The oils contained in the nut are very toxic to handle unless processed at very high temperatures. Ummm, yeah nah!
We will never complain about the price of Cashew Nuts again!
As mentioned at the end of the last post, the border crossing from Costa Rica to Panama is the strangest we have come across so far. There is no barrier or person monitoring the actual entering of Panama but you are supposed to stop at the window and have your passport stamped. So we did. The young guy asked to see our proof of onward travel, so we showed him ;-)
As we launched ourselves, rather unceremoniously, into Panama a guy called out from a mini bus to ask if we were going to David. We jumped straight on board and off we went. We weren't sure how long it was going to take us to get to our destination, our next housesit, and weren't sure if we would have to stop for the night in David. This was not to be, as we soon discovered the (mini) bus service in Panama is second to none! They aren't exactly on a schedule as they just go when they are full .... and even then will keep stopping to pick people up. There is a continual stream of them so you don't have to take a full one if you don't wish to be squashed up with other hot bodies.
Terminal de Bus, David
It only took about an hour to get from the border to David. The driver seemed to be in a bit of a hurry! We got spat out at the bus terminal in David to discover what a well organised place this was. Unprecedented in our journey so far. It actually looked like a bus station rather than just a gravel car park. We soon found the bus to Las Lajas, jumped aboard and a couple of hours later arrived right outside our digs for the next few months.
La Pepita de Maranon http://www.lapepitapanama.com/ is a bed and breakfast accommodation on the road to La Playa (the beach) de Las Lajas, turning off the Panamerican Highway at San Felix. The owners, Erika and Fabio, have built a bottle house, a casa made of recycled bottles, as part of the accommodation. It really is VERY cool. You can watch them building it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy_eko8IeCk
Erika and Fabio who were heading off to Italy (where they are from) to get married and honeymoon in Ireland. Therefore they required our assistance to hang out with their fun fur babies.
Happy Family
Morena, the matriarch of the clan, came from Italy when Erika and Fabio came to Panama 6 or 7 years ago. She can usually be found lying around like this, waiting for someone to scratch her tummy. Occasionally she ventures outside to survey her territory ..... but she doesn't like it out there. The birds swoop on her, the lizards are too quick for her ..... and basically, well, it's just too darn hot.
Reno is Panamanian born and bred and is the more serious natured of the clan. He likes to play the man, not the ball in his games with Dandy and their faux fights sometimes sound quite serious ... but are not! He loves to lay in the hammock with someone and chases flies for fun. He too, lies around on his back waiting for someone to pass by and scratch his tummy.
Dandy is definitely the baby of the family and a real joker. Later at night and early in the mornings (the only times it is not too hot to run around) he will instigate a game of throw with one of his toys. He hasn't yet realised that if he gave it back more often the game would last longer. He also likes to takes a keen interest in Morena's activities, which she doesn't always appreciate. Oh, and he inexplicably likes to lay out in the midday sun sometimes!!!!
Coconut slayer
The first thing we had to get used to was the weather. The heat and humidity can make it really hard to sleep so it is lucky we didn't have anything that had to be done each day. Really ... all you want to do is lie around in a hammock. Fortunately there is plenty of opportunity for that.
We arrived at the start of the rainy season. This means that every other day or so a storm will arrive in the early or late afternoon. And that is a bonafide tropical storm. We are always pleased when this happens as the temperature drops a degree or two (down from 34C) and becomes momentarily a little more comfortable. It is also quite awesome to watch the storms come in and to sit under the tin roof while they wear themselves out.
The mornings are always clear and fine and it very occasionally rains through the night. When it does, the mornings are even more pleasant. We are not sure if it is the weather that causes the power outages ??? ...... or whether they are just a fact of life round these parts but it is not much of an inconvenience. We only require the power for internet and lights. Because of the humidity, we also have to be careful to keep the mold at bay. There are definitely benefits to the rainy season though ... but more on that in the post about produce.
With our speedy trip to the border we were over it in no time and on a bus headed for Liberia. We stayed the night in a hostel just around the corner from the bus station so we would have an easy commute the next morning. Hospedaje Dodero is clean, secure and with a great outdoor kitchen. Security for a hostel so close to the bus terminal is not to be taken lightly as it tends not to be the safest part of town but when you just want a bed for the night to carry on travelling the next day you also don't want to be hassling with taxis. Run by an American guy who is very personable you can only get in AND out by ringing the bell.
We had decided to head for the hills to cool down and Monteverde seemed to be the place to do it. However, figuring out how to get there by bus was no easy task. The bus schedules in Costa Rica are even more of a mystery than Nicaragua!!! Also, in CR you pay for the whole journey regardless of where you get on and off. Bit of a rip off compared to the rest of Central America :-(
So we took a bus from Liberia to Puntarenas and asked the driver to let us of at La Irma, which is really just a cross road .... and voila! just around the corner was the bus shelter on the road to Monteverde. We got talking to a couple of guys and next thing, a local from Monteverde stopped in a van and offered us a lift up the hill for $5.00 each. We accepted immediately as this would save us a couple of hours waiting for the public bus. Oh man, that road, what a stunning piece of ungraded potholed rock laden piece of ..... took an age to get the 30 odd kms up to the village but the views were amazing. It was so good to be in the hills where it was a little bit cooler.
We had booked at a hostel which was a little way out of town but a guy from one of the local businesses kindly called them to come and get us. People are so helpful! Turns out we just loved Chillout House and ended up staying longer than we planned. We had a whole house nearly to ourselves. There were two rooms but we hardly saw the people in the other room. They were proper tourists intent on seeing all the sights and eating out each night. Not just a couple of travellers looking for a place to rest. The fact that the hostel was some way out of town was off-set by the owners, a brother and sister duo, who were happy to take you in and out whenever you wanted to go. And this was no mean feat given that the local roads were the same as the road up the hill. Dreadful. Edwin even got up at stupid o'clock the morning we left and took us to the bus station. The photo below is of Charlie, the hostel dog, fare-welling us at 5:15am. One of the problems of sleeping was that it got so light in the mornings. The other, of course, was the heat. At this point in our CA travels we have yet to come across hot running water or air conditioning.
We enjoyed Monteverde. We bought some vegetables, lentils and chicken and cooked up a big pot of stew which we dined on for a few days. Chillout house not only had a full kitchen but breakfast is provided (and it was always VERY good, something different each day) and they even supply tea and coffee whenever you want it. The coffee makers in Costa Rica are a bit interesting. Just a material sock hanging on a wire. Works a treat.
Seeing as we were staying in the Cloud Forest, it seemed churlish not to go and see it. We went for a walk in the forest one day and a quite expensive walk in the canopies another. The canopies are a series of high bridges that allow you to look into the tree tops. We were surprisingly underwhelmed by this experience. There was hardly any activity of even bugs and butterflies which is disappointing when you consider this to be a relatively untouched part of the world.
Hmmm, not so sure about this!
Nest of hummingbird chicks
MOVE OVER DAVID ATTENBOROUGH!
On the public bus back down the hill we were just surprised to make it without any problems! The bus dropped us off at Puntarenus, a coastal village which is as touristy as CA gets. At the bus stop the police were waiting to ensure the tourists weren't getting ripped off or being fed false information by the touters. They were also giving out Travel Safe booklets. Good on them!
We caught the next bus to Quepos where we had booked a night in an AirBnb. It was really hard to find as the instructions just said at the entrance to the Muscle Gym - a typical address in CA. A guy was finally able to take us to the house, down a very dodgy driveway but the house was really nice .... and we had air conditioning! We wandered out for a local dinner and slept for a very long time. I suspect because we were finally cool enough to do so.
We had been slightly mis-informed regarding the next leg of our journey. We were trying to get down the coast to Palmer Norte as we had arranged to call into the house we will be staying in at Costa Rica in a few months time .... on the River Sierpe. The locals in Quepos kept telling us you couldn't take a local bus from town. We still rather suspect you can. It's just that the Gringos don't ... They don't know that we love local buses, being time rich and cash poor. So be it, we paid a small fortune for our ticket (again the full fare even tho we weren't going far) and made our way to our next bus stop which required a taxi ride out of town. The bus was really late but this allowed us to experience our first tropical down pour. Bliss. Fortunately for us the Central Americans take pride in the quality of their bus shelters.
Palmer Norte turned out to be great place. We had a really great big room with AC (sounds flasher than it was!). We were just about the only guests while we were there as there was a lot of rebuilding going on. There is always a lot of noise in Central America. Dogs are always barking, cocks are always crowing, carts clanking along, horses snorting and someone is always hammering or banging. There are no zoning rules so you can run a business from anywhere. And everyone does. It's quite fun to see what goes on around the place.
There was a fabulous fruit stall where we found some quality tropical local fruit. We bought tonnes and ate it solidly for a couple of days.
We took a bus down to the river and were met by Lori and Adam, the couple who are house sitting there before us. They took us up the river in the boat - which will be ours for a couple of months - and we spent the day at the house. We had an awesome time and are really looking forward to our own sit there .... but that can wait for another blog post.
The border between Costa Rica and Panama at Paso Canoas is a most confusing place. You have to back track from where the bus drops you to find the exit office so you can get stamped out of CR. But first you need to find somewhere to buy your exit tax. You get directed to a bank which doesn't exist. There is a bank machine too but, oh, that didn't work either. So you get re-directed to a van with a couple of women and an eftpos type machine. All seems quite dodgy but it works. You then need to find the office to get stamped into Panama. Such is Central travel. You get used to it if you really want to do it. And everyone is so helpful, even if they don't know what they're talking about! It's their desire to help that counts :-)
