It’s been a long five months since our last report from Costa Rica. During that time, we returned to Arizona, where we enjoyed visiting with family and friends between long days of hard work. In spite of all of our planning and list making, the job of getting the house ready to be put on the market, packing and/or selling everything we own, and loading what we decided we couldn’t live without into a shipping container turned out to be far more complex than we ever imagined. And when our time was up, we said sad farewells to the people we love and flew off to start this next phase of our life.
Our biggest disappointment was that, even though we stayed in Arizona two months longer than expected, we still ran short of time to see everyone and in the end, the time to leave arrived so quickly that we missed out on the opportunity to savor our last moments at home. I guess we'll just have to keep reminding ourselves that the U.S. and everyone we left behind is just a plane ride away.
For now, we have a lot of learning and adjusting and settling in to do - starting with a pop quiz on how to cope with the day to day challenges of living here.
In our first four days…
We found ourselves locked out of both bedrooms, the water went out twice, the suicide shower melted down, and the propane tank ran out of gas (while making the morning coffee, of course).
On the flip side… in our first eight days, we succeeded in reinstating our cell phone service, ordering a new Internet connection (which was installed in 7 days instead of the 8 we were promised!), resolving a computer problem with the bank that was preventing us from accessing our account on the Internet, signing me up for a supplemental insurance policy that will cover treatment at private hospitals and clinics (more on that another day) and fixing and/or enduring all of the problems that went wrong in the first four days.
On balance, not bad.
Note on the shower problem: When I went to use it for the first time, I turned on the water, but only a few spits came out. Silly me, I then opened the spigot more (dumb, dumb, dumb) thinking more water pressure (what’s that???) might help. It didn’t. With no water to cool the heating element, it overheated before I had the good sense to turn spigot (and the power) off. Result? The PVC pipe to which the shower head was attached softened and sagged. The suicide shower had bit the proverbial dust.
Note on door locks: The massive doors in the apartment had sagged while we were gone, throwing the striker and the latch to the deadbolts out of alignment. A little attention from our landlord’s handyman restored our access pronto!
Note on bank problem: There’s little point trying to understand banking computer systems. Problems happen mysteriously and they resolve mysteriously. We are simply grateful both for resolution and the efforts of Luis, who stuck with the problem until it was fixed.
On to one of my favorite subject: Tico grastronomy!
Meet the not so lowly guanabana – or a quarter of one to be exact. This specimen was a gift from Señora Mayra. Since Mayra and I still share a serious lingual disconnect, I said a gracious “muchas gracias” and headed for the Internet to learn how to transform it into the juice I know to be a favorite among Ticos.
It turns out that the fruit of the guanabana, which is known in some parts of the world as the soursop, is made up of dozens of fibrous membranes, or pockets, and each of those contains at least one large seed. To eat the fruit or juice it, each membrane has to be removed and the poisonous seed squeezed out.
The fruit is quite tart, so I can’t imagine eating it out of hand. Turning it into juice seemed like a much better idea, but that involved blending the seed-removed membranes, forcing the pulp through a sieve, blending it again and sieving it a second time. Whew! Add a little (lot) of sugar, some ice, and some water and voila! We ended up with about 12 ounces of guanabana juice – an interesting flavor reminiscent of a creamy blend of pineapple and strawberry.
If you someday find yourself staring at a soursop and have a bit of time on your hands, give it a try. It’s worth it just for the experience.
Pura Vida
