Spending the Holidays Tico style
If you´re reading this you probably know that my family and some awesome friends made the journey down to Costa Rica in December to visit me. In order to save a little money the vacation ended a few days before Christmas. So I headed back to my town exhausted and ready for the slow pace of ¨campo¨ life. It was hard for me to think that it was Christmas, being in sunny and in the 80 and 90s. This Christmas and New years was very different than I had ever spent, but in the end, both holidays passed and I enjoyed them very much, but of coarse Oregon was on my mind.
Holidays in the boonies of Costa Rica involve a lot of killing… Don´t get scared nobody died, just a lot of animals, and boy did they taste good! It all started the 23rd when we killed a few chickens for the tamales that were really good. Here they grind up corn to make the filling, then put some rice, sweet pepper, and green beans in with a piece of Chicken. It’s then all wrapped up in a banana leaf and tied with vines and put in boiling water. They taste delicious and it’s cool that everything comes from the community, they grow or raise everything.
Christmas Eve was interesting I left my house at 5 in the morning to round up a cow that we were going to kill. I even felt bad a little; this cow was the tamest cow I have been around. I walked right up to it, put a rope around its horns and walked it to the creek where we shot it behind the head with the good old 38 special, Lol. I was holding a hind leg while we bleed it out in a bucket for its blood when it gave one last kick, luckily it got me in the shoulder and not the face or I would be missing a few teeth, lol. And of coarse, we never slaughter a cow without the proper toasting material; Guaro (alcohol) We had a shot after we killed it and a few more one we got it back to the barn to part it out. We cut the whole damn thing up into little pieces for the Christmas barbeque. The hooves, spine, intestines and other parts will be saved for soup.
The Christmas party was at my host dads parent´s house, about 50 people came and we barbequed, drank and let off fireworks, (some mortars, and quarter sticks of dynamite) it was pretty cool actually. The meat taste good, some better than others, I’m sure the more tender pieces were the better parts of the cow, but it was all mixed together so who knows what part I was eating. Oh, and the bbq is a little different, the put a couple blocks of cement down build a fire in-between and lay the back to an old refrigerator for the grill (the radiator part) Surprisingly it worked. One thing is for sure, they are resourceful.
New Years Eve was nice too. I few less people, another bbq, but this time with a pig, they killed a pig the day before so this time it was bbq pork, that I think I liked better than the cow, either way it was good. And some ceviche (fish cured in limon) and of coarse some more guaro and even some beers, which is a must for New Years. And there was even some karaoke going on inside, but I stayed outside in my comfort zone, I hate karaoke, in English let alone Spanish lol. In the end, my holidays went by very nicely.
Ok, well that was a quick version of my holidays in the Campo of Costa Rica. Hope all yours went by nicely!