Costa Rica

I was just browsing over a few old posts and I realized I neglected to mention that I have now totally been to Costa Rica. I can report that it's a lovely place to totally go.

Not only are the people quite friendly, but it's choc-a-block with interesting flora and fauna, some of which are delicious, but all of which are quite intriguing. To be honest, I didn't eat a lot of the local fauna, but I stayed alert for unusual fruits to nosh on. My mom used to occasionally bring home weird and unusual fruits when I was growing up. We'd all come and try them out and usually we got sea-monkeyed by a star fruit or dragon fruit, but occasionally we'd learn that kiwis or mangoes were delicious and add them to our list of regulars. Sometimes mom would unaccountably learn something false, like papayas are delicious, and the rest of us would have to choke down fruit that tastes like mucus, but overall it was worth it.

So anyway, arriving at adulthood, I felt I had a pretty good handle on what the world's fruit is generally like. There are millions of versions of tiny oranges that all taste the same; a handful of reliable standards like apples, pears, bananas, peaches, nectarines and plums; and some more interesting if still standard "tropical" fruits like mangoes, pineapple, papayas (blech). Finally, there are the weirder options like lychees, ugli, star fruit which never really caught on because they're awful, dull, or just not worth the extra effort.

So when I went to St. Lucia some time back and had myself a soursop, which is the best fruit on Earth, I felt a little betrayed. It was the same way I felt when I found out that cuttlefish are not just the source of those weird shells that look like soap dishes and wash up on beaches in England for no apparent reason. They are also astonishing alien-like beasties that can change both the color and texture of their skin, see as well as us, and already know the manner and time of your death.

That's why (the fruit bit, not the cuttlefish), when I go places I haven't been before, I want to try the fruit. The weird thing about Costa Rica is their utter reluctance to ply you with new fruit. So weird is this, that it extends to mangoes. I found this lack of mango frustrating, not because it's new and exotic any more, but because it was falling out of the goddamn trees whenever the wind blew. Nevertheless, we could not get served a plate of it for love or money.

Every morning we sat down to a platter of FANTASTIC pineapple, quite good bananas, papayas that tasted unremarkably like snot, and wholly inexplicable watermelon. I'd gaze wistfully out into the hotel parking lot where cars had started a reasonably compelling mango chutney using nothing more than gravity and the bushels of fresh fruit that had fallen from the trees during the night, and wonder what the blazing hell was going on around here.

I know where you live and I want my mango back, gringo!

I finally seized my chance when a troupe of white-throated Capuchin monkeys started shaking a tree for fruit and knocked some to the ground. Monkeys may be hella strong, but I wanted my fruit, dammit. I dashed across the street, grabbed a mango, and pranced away one mango richer and slightly worried about being chased down and gang-mauled by a tribe of feisty Capuchins.

It was delicious.

Now I'm back in the U.S. where I just heard about the Paw Paw which grows in like Ohio or something for godsake. What the hell supermarkets? You've got mango-like superfruits growing in my own back yard and you won't find and sell them to me because they're not created from seeds made by Monsanto?