There are threes things that I spend most of my time doing while working in Costa Rica. Editing, eating and sleeping. I edit too much. I sleep too little. I eat just right.
The food in Costa Rica has run the gamut from great to terrible. Sadly the terrible food is on site, where I work. The fruit is great (and I eat tons of it), the salads aren't bad, but the meat is always overcooked and rubbery. It doesn't matter what kind of meat it is, fish, chicken, it all looks and tastes pretty awful. So oddly enough I mostly eat vegetarian these days. I supplement all those fruits and salads with a little rice and beans from time to time, but damn am I tired of rice and beans. I am also wary of the food where I work since a family of raccoons live above the kitchen and we once saw them urinating down a wall. Yeah. I think I am losing weight even though I haven't exercised since I injured myself.
Thankfully I eat off site for dinner. We are near a small town called La Virgen and we are making our way through it. There are actually some good places in this tiny town. We have had pizza, chinese food, burritos, tacos, chalupas. Then there are the restaurants that serve various rices chock full of octopus or squid or shrimp or chicken. I don't think this town sees many gringos, but they are all quite polite. If we don't go to town we eat at our hotel. Their food is pretty good, but again, I am tired of rice and beans and they serve plenty of it. The best thing they make is french fries served with what they call ketchup. It is basically thousand island without the pickles. I once ordered a hamburger here and while it tasted fine it was no hamburger. It was a chicken patty smothered with cheese and topped with a large piece of ham.
About an hour from us is the biggest town around, Guapiles. They have a casino, lots of crime, and best of all a Burger King attached to a Church's Chicken. We have only had it once, but it was quite a nice change of pace. I hear there is a great steakhouse in town. We might give it a whirl one of these days.
Some of the best food I have had was in Puerto Viejo. Above is a photo of the jerk fish I ate. The jerk chicken was amazing as well. For breakfast I had this:
It's a chocolate and peanut butter sandwich, all of it homemade. Delicious. While there we also went to a small Argentine restaurant and literally ate all of their food. That tends to happen with the way we roll.
Thing is, all of us editors have gotten quite close and try to eat together. That means that there are upward to 21 of us that descend on a restaurant. It tends to be quite a shock to their systems. Often we get there and someone runs to a phone and calls in reenforcments. People tend to live close to where they work. There have also been numerous occasions where the brits actually drank a bar dry. Last night we did it to our hotel. We paid the bartender a large tip, sent him home and then proceeded to drink everything that wasn't locked up. All the beer. All the vodka. All the guaro (some strong stuff that you do shots of). We kept tabs on what we drank so that they could charge us properly. I went to bed at four. Many did not go to sleep until noon or later. In our wake we left tons of empty bottles and debris. Half the brits passed out by the pool. I think our hotel both loves and hates us. The other guests most likely just hate us.
I had today off, and all I did was relax and finish off the night at yet another pizza place. We are back to work tomorrow. It has been a grind, but the end is approaching rapidly. Two more weeks and 7 more nights of shows. I am going to miss it, but I also can't wait to get away with my wife and travel a bit. I have also pretty much healed. The stitches are out, the knee wound is closing up, and the rest of my wounds are just about gone. I might even try to go for a run soon, if I ever find the time to do so. Until next time.
