Too Many Magos

One of the things I was looking forward to during this trip was experiencing the local cuisines and having access to amazing LOCAL fruits.  One of my favorites is mango.  In Oregon we can get decent mangos, but nothing like the red and yellow mangos that when peeled look like gold on your plate.  They are sweet, a little tangy and you can get them in many different ways.  You can buy pre-cut and peeled green mango, you can put salt on it, or chile on it, or both (which is actually pretty amazing).  However, my favorite still remains to be the simple ripe mango.

On our last night in Granada Nicaragua I went in search of more mango.  I like to buy the whole ones and peel them myself because the pre-cut ones are often greener, which is good but not my favorite.  So in the market on the streets I am asking different vendors what they are asking for mangos and the common one is 3 for $1 (pretty cheap I know, but I can get better if I shop around).  We eventually found a person willing to sell me 12 small mangos (about half the size of the ones we get in the states usually) for $1.  It was the end of the day and I don´t think he wanted to carry them home with him.  So I picked out 12 perfect mangos with the intention of eating some for dinner and then sharing the rest with the friends we have made at the hostel.

So our dinner was fresh mango, avacato (they were amazing!!), local cheese, bread, salad (and in Nicaragua it is cabbage, some carrot, a little spice and a vinigar kind of dressing, very light and refreshing), and some of the most amazing pastries I have EVER had.  However the name of this post is Mangos, not Pastries (I´ll leave that one for Jose to write). So between the two of us we ate four of the mangos.  I ate most of them since they are my favorite and Jose prefers the slightly green ones with salt and chile.  I was in heaven.

The next day I find myself left with 8 mangos still and I don´t want to carry them with me back to San Jose.  I cut up 6 of them to share with our new friends at the hostel, which they appreciated a lot, and I again ate another mango´s worth of the golden deliciousness, maybe more.  I didn´t know when I would next be able to have such wonderful mangos so I took advantage of the opportunity.

The next day however, my body was not pleased.  I suddenly very aware of where the nearest restroom was and I stayed away from fruit for three days.  I, hoever, am not deterred.  I will find more mangos and eat them ALL...just at a more reasonable rate.

My body may have told me that I had had enough mango, but my mouth still waters at the thought of the sweet and tangy flavor of fresh, local mangos.

A Lesson In Pain

So most of you know that I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to spicy foods.  Costa Rica doesn´t do much in the way of spicy food but in Nicaragua they do put a little bit of spice in some of their dishes.  Today Jose and I decided to try some of the local fare by taking a chance with the street food.  We got several things to try and brought them back to the hostel to eat, after washing our hands.  There was this one local dish that was amazing!!  They put it in a couple of banana leaves as the bowl, some plantains, yucca (a potato and yucca cross kind of thing), meat and some cabbage salad that is kind of pickled but it was really good.  I was eating the food with a little of everything in each bite and drinking my bottled water when, in one of my bites I suddenly bit into something that went "pop" in my mouth.  I immediately felt excruciating pain throughout my entire mouth.  The burning was horrendous and the pain didn´t seem to end!!  Jose is laughing at me, my mouth is on fire, my nose is running, I was crying...it was SO painful!

The culprit?  A bright green seed-like thing that was about the size of a pomegranate seed.  I had seen them in the salad, assumed they were spicy and thus avoided them.  That final bite had one hidden in it and Jose  didn{t believe me.  Now I have to find more, make him taste it, and (hopefully) have him say: "oh yah, that is kind of spicy."

I can check off a couple of things from my Central America "to-do list":
I have had my favorite kind of beer once again, Toña, and it is as good as I remember it.
I got to hear the rain fall on a corregated aluminum roof and I was rushed back to the small house in Monteverde that I lived in two years ago.
I got to climb the strangler fig in Monteverde
Jose got to meet my host mom.

I have yet to see a rainbow, but I have a feeling that it will happen soon.

Lessons Learned

Some things I have learned in my travels thus far:

Roosters (gallos) that crow between the hours of 8 pm and 5 am should be turned into pollo (cooked chicken)!!

Weed whackers should be used only for their title purpose, not for mowing one´s lawn.

Having a gas station in town is not always a good thing.  The easier it is to get gasoline for your cars, motorcycles, dirt bikes, ATV´s and the like, the more they are used and the louder the town is.

Costa Rica may be beautiful, but it is expensive and the food in a restaurant isn´t that good. ( My host Mom´s cooking was amazing though.)

When crossing the boarder into Nicaragua you have to pay the taxes in two different currencies.  $10 (in dollars) and about $2 in cordobas (the local currency).

When you buy a ticket for a public bus, you are not garaunteed a place to sit.  A one hour bus ride seems VERY long when standing.

Making friends while traveling is easy, you just have to start the conversation with "so where are you from?".  New friends can make traveling an even more rewarding experience.

Having three different types of currency in your wallet is confusing.

Key boards in Latin America are frustrating.  The punctuation marks are in all the wrong spots!  Instead of an apostraphe, I get a {.  Instead of the @ symbol, I get ".  Instead of a semi-colon, I get ñ.

Jose doesn´t sweat unless dancing enthusiatically.  I think I hate him a little for that.

I really should just memorize my passport number.

Family is one of the most important things that a person can have.  I love my family, the true and the chosen members.

¡Los quiero todos!