Marcos y familia

We've been at Finca Qujiote for over a week now and we've been having a blast! Over the past few days we've been spending a lot of time with Marcos and his family collecting fruit from around la finca and improving our Español. Marcos speaks almost no English, so there's been a lot of cherades going on, and for the most part we're understanding one another. As a bonus, Lucia (the German girl whom recently arrived at the farm) knows some Spanish and even more English so we've got some what of a translator! In any case we're having a lot of fun together.

On Thursday I had inquired as to where I might find a fruit I had recently tried, pejibaye. Pejibaye is, as I now know, both a nearby city as well as a fruit. After we ha a laugh about the confusion, Marcos said, "mañana". Friday afternoon we meet with Marcos and his sons Waner and Michael to go pejibaye hunting. As I have come to find out this was not as easy as I had assumed. Pejibaye is the fruit of the spiny palm which tends to be both extremely spiny (similar to a cactus) and tall as all hell (hell being between 60-80 feet tall). Mind boggling, I know. One may think that there was a specialized tool used to attain the magical fruit. Nope. Marcos simply brought a few long (about 40' long) cane plants, then borrowed my newly aquired machete to chop down a forked branch from a nearby tree to create a hook then wrapped them together with an old bike tire - volia! A really long and wobbly vaudeville-esque cane.

After some breakage, repairs, spines in hands, a bit of hiking, pit stops for cacao fruit and sugar cane, and about 3 hours in the rain we returned with around 50lbs of fruit! Marcos invited us to his house to show us how to prepare the fruit by boiling it for an hour and half in a pressure cooker, peeling, halving, pitting, and adding a dollop of mayo or butter(it's a savory peanut like food). Ginnie added some fresh lime juice and I discovered that hot sauce, plain yogurt and German chocolate work really well!

Today following our trip to Turrialba, including la faira, a soda-small restaurant- and the feed store for a new pair of rubber boots (I had torn mine sometime while pejibaye hunting) we met back up with Marcos for naranja (orange) and limón (lemon) gathering. The citrus was much simpler than the pejibaye, but just as fun. We collected sweet oranges, sweet lemons, tangarines and sour oranges. Upon our return back to Casa de Gienne (Marco's house is nextdoor) we decided to take a short hike to go swimming in the the river and invited Marcos and his family along, they all came and had a great time.

On our way "home" (the Volunteer house, where we are staying) after dinner with Gienne, Marcos stoped us and invited us in for cervesas (beers) and a Costa Rican Liquor (I'll have to get back on the name as I don't recall it at the moment). We had lots of laughs and got to practice our cross cultural communication skills. A fantastic end to a fun day.