New Site

These past couple of days Melana and I have been settling in to our new home in the the northern province of Alajuela. Melana’s host family was kind enough to drive us down to our new home and we stopped by the beach along the way for lunch. This also meant that we came the long way around Mt. Arenal (and the whole Vulcan Tenorio park) and had to swing up to Upala to in order to get to our site. It was a nice trip though, coming from the relatively cold San Jose province through the heat of Guanacaste and finally settling in the warm yet dry zone in the north. I’ve included a detailed map of Costa Rica in the link below. If you’d like to find out what the heck I’m going on about, you can do so here.

So far things have not stopped moving as we’ve made preparations for Christmas. We have been cooking non stop for the horde of people that will descend upon the house come Christmas Eve. On Wednesday, I watched my host dad and his neighbors butcher a newly slaughtered pig which we would later cook and make into chicharrones (fried pork fat) and other dishes. Chicharrones pictured here:

In the afternoon, I donned boots and made my way into the forest to chop down banana leaves which would be used to wrap tamales. We then held the banana leaves over a fire to soften them before cleaning them for wrapping tamales.

For the uninitiated, Tamales consist of a ground corn paste and rice with meat (in this case, from the pig) and some vegetables. The combination is then wrapped in a banana leaf (or corn husk in the US) and boiled for several hours. Tamales are pictured below!

I have been struggling in Spanish. Melana’s six years of diligent study are really putting my paltry three months to shame! I’m getting better every day, though! Hope everyone is having a great holiday season!