25 Sure Signs You Are Becoming Accustomed to Life in Rural Costa Rica

I saw this and had to post it to our blog.

We live in Atenas and it is pretty rural.

It ain't the sticks, but the population is not very high and most people work in the agricultural arena
Please feel free to add your “Sure Signs” in the comments section below. Pura vida!

25 Sure Signs You Are Becoming Accustomed to Life in Rural Costa Rica

1. You were never considered a “morning person,” but now you don’t even require an alarm clock; the sun beaming into your bedroom window and the birds chirping wake you up quite consistently. And they require no electricity (see Sure Sign #2).

2. You stop assuming water and electricity are available every day. Instead, when you wake up, you switch on the light and faucet to see if either or both are working. You learn to keep an extra bottle of water (or five) handy.

3. Butterflies are a part of your bedroom decor. Not the plastic or fabric kind; the flying, fluttering, living kind.

4. When you see a few ants floating in your tea, you don’t dump the tea; you spoon the ants out and keep drinking.

5. You take your rain jacket or an umbrella everywhere. Even when the sun is shining.

6. You stop cursing the rain and are actually grateful for it. It is, after all, the reason much of Costa Rica is such a gorgeous green.

7. You schedule outdoor activities some time between 6 AM and 1 PM.

8. Instead of squashing the creepy crawlies you find in your house, you either let them be, chase them outside, or capture and release them. Advanced move: You lean in for a closer look to see what new creatures you are sharing your home with.

9. You put meetings on hold to see what species of bird is singing outside the office.

10. You stop wearing moisturizer. All of that moisture in the air is doing a damn good (and free) job of keeping your skin hydrated.

11. Your decision about what to wear involves this rule: If there are no visible stains on an article of clothing and you don’t cringe when smelling it, it’s clean.

12. You stop gripping the seat, door, or dash every time you get in any type of transportation. Or you at least lessen your grip a bit.

13. When you wake up to an unknown insect crawling on your arm, you don’t shriek; you brush it off and go back to sleep.

14. You stop buying all your fruit from the store and start pulling it from the trees.

15. You stop expecting people to show up “on time” and you switch your internal clock to Tico Time. If you really need someone to meet you at a specific time, you tell them a time earlier than your actual meeting time.

16. You have more bug bites than freckles.

17. You always have rice ready.

18. When you are out on a jog and hear a low, barking sound, you don’t look around on the ground for a dog; you look up in the trees for the howler monkeys.

19. You wash your clothes at least two days in advance of when you need them to account for the time it will take for them to dry.

20. Your front door is wide open most hours of the day. So are all of your windows. Advanced move: you live in a house where some doors and windows don’t have glass or screens or any way to *close* them.

21. You accept that seat numbers and bus tickets are not equivalent to the amount of people you can fit on the bus. You can always fit one more person on the bus.

22. You are that one more person trying to fit on the bus.

23. You have mastered the art of standing in the aisle of the bus. Advanced move: you have mastered sleeping while standing in the aisle of the bus.

24. When you go to a soda for a meal, you don’t ask for a menu; you ask what they have in their kitchen today.

25. You give – and follow – directions that include neither exact addresses nor street names, but instead involve descriptions of parks, colors of buildings, and that store over there.


This post is dedicated to anyone who has lived, worked, or played in rural Costa Rica. A special thanks to my Hojancha ohana – Charlotte, Anais, Jessica, Lara, Hanna, Maria, Bram, Guillaume, FX, Teniko, DJ, Marcus, and Scott – who have contributed (intentionally or otherwise!) to the creation of this list.
Originally posted -- http://sunnyamfitzgerald.com/2013/07/03/25-sure-signs-you-are-becoming-accustomed-to-life-in-rural-costa-rica-2/

The Atenas Ox Cart Parade

Many years ago the President of Costa Rica ruled that to get with the times and to give Costa Rica a place in the world, Costa Rica needed to have some sort of cash crop. He decided that it was going to be Coffee. But not just any coffee, Arabica coffee was the only thing that Costa Rica could grow.

He gave land grants to people willing to grow coffee, tax breaks, etc. For a dictator, this was a pretty forward thinking thing to do.

If you do not know,Costa Rica is a mountainous country. and I means some pretty big mountains.  The only way for the farmers to get their coffee beans to the local markets was to go over these mountains and then down to the coast.

How did they do this? Yep, you probably guessed by the title of the blog, by oxcart.

The oxcart has a long history here in Costa Rica and has evolved into a  National Labor Symbol. In fact it became official when it was designated the National Labor Symbol on March 22, 1988.

Living in Atenas there are coffee growers all over.

My neighbor across the street last year alone harvested about 2500 lbs of coffee.

My friend Gabriel and his family is blazing the organic trail out at El Toledo Coffee plantation.

And everywhere you go, you see people growing coffee in their own yards. Talk about a prolific plant.

Ever year the people of Atenas holds their Ox Cart Parade. Some of these are sponsored, but a lot are truly working ox carts that still go up and down the mountains here to haul the coffee down the mountains.

So this is a tradition that is embedded in the culture. You see the pride in the ox cart drivers. They work hard at painting their carts, taking care of the oxen and proudly walk in the parade every year.

This is Costa Rica and it was so neat to be part of this event and see it first hand.

Friday is Feria Day!

It is Friday and Friday means Feria!

What is the Feria?

Feria is Spanish for Fair, but in this case it stands for the market or farmers market,

It is on Fridays where all the farmers, produce people, bakers, cheese makers, fish mongers and butchers come and sell their goods. AT a very reasonable price I might add.

If you are someone who loves fresh fruits and vegitables, then this is the place for you.

What Makes Atenas Different?

Atenas, the city where we live,  was named the most friendliest climate in all the world by National Geographic. We literally live in perpetual springtime 365 days of the year.

Because it is perpetual spring, we have a LOT of fruits and veggitables that grow year around, where in the U.S. they only grow during the spring time.

We have papaya, pineapple, mango, passion fruit and many sorts of citrus. Interestingly enough, we do not have the comon yellow lemon down here. For some reason, it does not grow here.

Here I am checking out some Star Fruit - yea, it grows here.

One of the neat things about feria day is that you get to see friends. Today we ran into John & Pat. In fact we pulled up the same time they did. We caught up on how each other are doing checked some things out together, then we got to business of shopping for that coming week's food.

 

Here we have apple bananas, yep, they have a apple taste. I personally think they have more of a berry taste. No matter what, they are great tasting. Once you have tried a tree ripened banana, you will never eat a store ripened again.

 El Toledo Coffee - I have to say some of the best coffee in the world. I just opened a bag of light roast and the flavors are out of this world. I never knew coffee could be this good. IF you come down for a visit, we will take you to El Toledo. You will fall in love with the coffee as well.

 These long brown things are Yucca. You eat them like you would potatoes. The are really good and in most restaurants, when you think you have potatoes, you are actually eating yucca.

Yes, the watermelon is that red. In fact a deep ruby red and they are really sweet to.

This is the stall where I buy my mangos. They have a pretty good selection. The key is to buy some fully ripe, some not so ripe and then some that need time to mature. This way you can have mango everyday like Tracye and I do for our breakfast fruit salad. 

Yep, one of the advantages of living where it is always springtime. Incredible fruit and veggies.

 

Visited the El Toledo Coffee Farm

We had some mutal friends that were visiting John Price and Gary Kah and they had the time and wanted to come up and visit with Tracye and I.

Over the weekend we showed them around Atenas and took them out to lunch at the Guanecaste Cafe.

While they were here, we mentioned the incredible coffee tour up at El Toledo. So they jumped on it and made plans to go visit and asked me to come along as well.

Teresa & Terry our wonderful friends from the states

It was a blast to go up to El Toledo again. See when we were doing our recon, our friends took us there and it was an incredible time. This is a place that everytime you go, you learn something new.

Gabriel is third generation coffee farmer on their families farm.

 

Gabriel really takes the time to educate the visitors about what it takes to grow organic coffee. The family are still learning daily little tips and tricks to grow a better healthier coffee bean. But not only that, to allow nature to really be part of the process.

 

Here Gabriel is talking about how they extract the bean with using less water and doing it in a more environmentaly friendly way. because they see their farm as an investment in the future, they are taking the time to care about the farm's health as well as their own health as well.

 

Gabriel's Wife is telling the visitors about the differnt roast types as well as educating us about the different flavors each roast will give. This was amazing to taste side by side the different roasts that the El Toledo Coffee Farm has. The lighter roast has more of a citrus flavor where the dark roast has a more earthy flavor. 

Here she is using a typical Costa Rican "Sock" to make coffee. They put coffee in the sock an pour hot water over the grounds and catch it in the pitcher.

 

Pedro The Rooster being photogenic.

I highly recomend coming to El Toledo. 

Check out their facebook at 

https://www.facebook.com/toledocoffeetour