Tico Tour Report

We just got back from a great week in Costa Rica with the Orlando Thompsons. Here's our report. Costa Ricans call themselves "Ticos" and they say "pura vida" (literally "pure life") as a greeting to indicate that life is great, especially if you slow down and enjoy it. It's the official motto of Costa Rica.

We took lots of pictures so follow us on our adventure and see if we took the Tico motto to heart.

We hiked volcanoes...

swam and beach combed...

and ate lots of great food.

We stayed in a fancy hacienda with a game room, an atrium, a pool and great views ...

and in jungle bungalows with mosquito nets and hammocks for sleeping. When grandma heard the howler monkeys in the early morning (they are the loudest land animal), she thought they might be wanting to kidnap her grandchildren sleeping in the hammocks and raise then to be wildmen like Tarzan, so she quickly got up and brought them inside. Later she found out that howler monkeys are rather small--just their voice is loud. They used recordings of howler monkeys for the dinosaur sounds in the Jurastic Park and other dinosaur movies.

We spend lots of time walking through the jungles looking for wild animals with a book about Costa Rican animals as our guide.

Joseph had a check list and was in charge of identifying birds. He must have identified at least 20 or 30 but they flew too fast for me to get pictures except for this sampling. The first builds next that hang from palm trees. The second is a parrot. The third is a quetzal carved out of a tire that hung on our porch. The last is a pelican that was wandering around an animal rescue center.

Blake was in charge of large mammals. He had no trouble finding lots of monkeys and sloths. At an animal rescue center he also found an anteater, deer, and an ocelot.

Spencer was in charge of reptiles and amphibeans. His most exciting find was a poisonous eyelash viper. He found several. At the wildlife rescue center he also found a cayman and a red eyed tree frog.

Tatum was in charge of finding insects and crustaceans. She found a termite nest in a tree, leaf carrying ants, lots of hermit crabs, and several large spiders--especially in the morning when we'd leave our bungalow and walk down the jungle paths and walk into their webs.

Cooper put himself in charge of sounding like a howler monkey.

Of course, you know what grandma put herself in charge of finding.

We also found for Joseph his dream car for when he turns 16.

Sign for Kim

Here is a special sign for Kim's collection.

Chocolate Forest Tour

The Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica was isolated from the rest of Costa Rica until recently, the home of cocoa, banana, and mango groves planted by American Indians and other Caribbean immigrants who came by boat from Panama and other islands. English adventurers (the Spanish called them pirates) also hid among the islands and raided the cocoa shipments from the Spanish, who wanted to keep control of the chocolate trade.

I'm sure that Thompsons with their shrewd business sense and love of chocolate numbered among these adventurers so we decided to follow in their footsteps and see where chocolate comes from.

Chocolate in this area grows in the shade of giant mango trees. In fact this chocolate forest that we explored is called "Mango Walk." If you click on the picture and look closely, you can see the tiny blossoms that grow into the cocoa pods you can see on the trees. They are pollinated by tiny "no see-ums," the pests of many Florida beaches. You now know that they have one useful function besides annoying beach combers.

When the pods are ripe, they are opened and the slimy beans are fermented for several days then dried in the sun.

The beans are then roasted, the shells are cracked then "winnowed" (blown away by a vacuum cleaner powered wind) and the bean is ground into a pure chocolate cream that is then sweetened, special flavors are added and it is cooled and molded in a special way to make a gourmet chocolate bar.

Spencer is demonstrating what the pure unsweetened chocolate cream tastes like before it is sweetened and made into a bar.

Our guide explained that just like craft breweries and vineyards, each chocolate plantation has its own special taste for its product. Here we are testing out how discriminating our tongues are. Spencer seemed to be best at differentiating the chocolate from the various nearby chocolate plantations for such things as fruitiness, earthiness, tartness, and the like.

Since chocolate in this purer state is so healthy for everyone, we had a chance to make our chocolate even healthier by combining it with various herbs and spices, such as basil, vanilla, garlic, ginger, thyme, oregano, mint, and sea salt. I can't remember all the choices, but each spoon held a different one for us to try out in our tasting party where we got to make our own combinations. Garlic with chocolate and mint was surprisingly delicious.

Pin the Tail on the Donkey?

When we got up this morning, this is the view we had in our Harry Potter Picture windows? Ready to pin the tail on the donkey? We call our windows Harry Potter pictures since they seem to be alive with moving and ever changing scenes, just like the pictures in the Harry Potter movies.

Grandma likes to turn the horses out in the morning to "mow the lawn," she says. I think she just hopes to pet them when we are having breakfast on the porch!