Barbecue Latin Style and Rainy Season Antics

Here in Costa Rica it is the rainy season and it has been a deluge of long storms and there has been some devastating storms that have washed away homes on the pacific coast. So being able to get out and enjoy myself has been hard. We had a small barbecue on the Saturday after I arrived and had all the neighbours and their children so in all 10 adults and I was the meat cook. It was a very strange atmosphere as we had to sit under the garage as it was pounding with rain on and off all day and in between the rain we would be surrounded by heavy fog all very strange and it did remind me of the UK a lot. The day turned into a typical Latin barbecue, we started with meats and a few beers and after 4 hours of light drinking of beer in which I had to drive to the supermarket to get a refill of beers, one neighbour brought out the rum and another fetched the Tequila, this was the beginning of the end. The eldest daughter of one neighbour, a university student of 25, made all of us take shots of Tequila and we also drank a few Rum and Gingers, and I warmed up the last of the 12 pounds of meats and put that out and we drank a few more beers, all the mature people were happily drunk but the eldest daughter was looking miserable and started telling us all that she had had a miscarriage and was unhappy, she started balling her eyes out and we all had another beer, we were all made to drink more Tequila and do the salt and lemon sucking routine, pretty nasty, I preferred the rum, so by 8 o’clock everyone was very drunk and laughing there asses off apart from the miserable crying daughter of the neighbour, one neighbour had to do the supermarket run for more tequila as we had we had drunk everything and eaten everything, so by 9 o’clock it was time to go to bed, I was drunker than I had for a long time but a great day was had by all and my Spanish was improved a little also.
We did take a small trip to a local national park just outside of San Jose the Capitol, it is called Ta Panti and it is up in the mountains that surround the central valley. It is pretty high and very steep sided valley and it was fully forested. When we got out at the car park I saw a butterfly that was bigger than anything I have seen in Peru and it was the iridescent blue Morpho, what fantastic site it was, but amongst the green trees and plants it stood out like a lighthouse. It is a pretty rainy area up in the mountains and the trees were festooned with long trailing moss and the branches were alive with orchids and many other plants that can live on the branches and extract the nutrients from the air and without attacking the tree, the only problem is that as the plants and mosses grow in size and number they become too heavy and break off branches and fall to the ground.

I was tempted to pick up some of the branches and take them home to adorn the garden but it is a criminal offence to remove anything from the park but the plants only die and are buried under the grasses and other things on the ground but I didn’t want a fine for taking something that had virtually no value other than being a nice plant or flowering plant.


This weekend we have a trip organised to go house hunting in the south, we have a race on now, we need to find a house to rent before Christmas and then we are also looking at places to buy but that is going to take more time as it is a small town and limited houses so we think we will be easier to build than buy. The old lady is coming Sunday to look after the kids again and I am looking forward to getting to the beach without the kids and taking it easy in the sunnier and drier pacific coast. Perhaps I can get invited to another latino style barbecue, I will tell you all about it.