In case it wasn't absolutely crystal clear from this blog I've been writing for over nine years now, I love traveling. I love getting away from work and everyday life and going somewhere that can change my perspective on the world. It could be to somewhere I've already fallen in love with or it could be somewhere totally brand new, although admittedly, the thrill of discovery on the totally brand new types of trips exceeds that of places I've already been to. I just can't wait to take in something new and absorb everything I can about a new country or city or continent. It's even better when I leave wanting to go back. And all of that definitely applied to Costa Rica.
I had a pretty good inkling I'd like Costa Rica a lot. It was mostly a wildlife trip to the middle of nowhere and I always relish those kinds of journeys. Sure, there was a bit of city living mixed in through our three nights in the capital of San Jose but our almost week away was mostly a chance to spend a lot of time in the jungle spotting creatures. And what could be disappointing about all that?
As it turned out...nothing. It was as awesome as I anticipated.
I try to temper my expectations when visiting a new country, but before we got on a plane and headed south through Miami to Costa Rica, I had one expectation of this trip that I felt pretty sure would come through for me, and that was that I'd end up somehow, somewhere with some incredible fruit.
I'm serious. One of the things I was super excited about on this trip was the opportunity to get some just amazing tasting fruit. I don't eat much fruit at home at all. Maybe there's a melon or two each year and I'll dabble in a few (and I really do mean a few) blueberries in the summer now and then. But take me to pretty much any place between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and I'm looking for some fruit to eat. This is some serious business.
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| Lychees, anyone? A cheap and delicious snack after breakfast (trust me!). |
There are typically two parts to my fruit quests in the tropics. There's very definitely the opportunity to try something I've never tasted or seen or even heard of and we for sure got some of that in Costa Rica. But I really long for fruit that I love from past trips and hope that I'll get something as good this time around.
The attraction to the first part here is doing something different. There are an astonishing variety of fruits that people eat in this world. I'm pretty confident that if I searched in the right places in Nothern Virginia where I live that I could find some of these same fruits I find in South America, Africa or Central America. But when we travel, they are just there. We don't have to look for them; we just stumble upon them.
It's stopping at a roadside restaurant for breakfast on the way to Tortuguero National Park and finding lychees for sale. Or taking a pitstop on the way to Carara National Park at what has to be one of the most amazing fruit stalls in the world by the side of the road and asking what the funny looking purple balls with the cartoonish green stems and leaves are. Or being handed a coconut with a hole drilled in the top along with a straw (paper straw, of course, in Costa Rica) to drink the water inside.
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| Bananas growing in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica. |
Chilled coconut water in the morning is very refreshing, by the way, and snacking on six or eight lychees to chase down a Costa Rican breakfast of gallo pinto with a fried egg, plantains, grilled salty farmers cheese and a healthy dose of salsa Lizano is a great way to start your morning. But those purple things? Not so good. They are called mangosteens and neither look nor taste either like mangos or langoustines (I mean why would they taste like langoustines?).
After asking what they were, I was handed a fruit split in half with white citrus-looking segments and was asked to pluck a segment out and taste it. I'd say a little bitter but not so objectionable. Definitely juicy. But the texture part was all wrong. First of all, there's a massive seed in the center of the segment and it seemed impossible to get the flesh separated easily from the seed itself. I ended up spitting it out after draining the juice. Maybe it was first time jitters or something. Clearly, I didn't know what I was doing. But I'll take lychees and chilled coconuts any day over mangosteens, at least until someone teaches me how to eat them properly.
I'd never tried any of those three things before. It's important to spread your wings a little when you travel. You never know what you'll fall in love with. Also, lychees are cheap in Costa Rica: 1,000 Colones per kilogram; that's like 73 cents per pound. Who sells fruit at a profit for 73 cents per pound?
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| Mangosteens (top) and pejibaye (or peach palm) (bottom). No raw pejibaye on this trip but I did have it in a tamale. |
So speaking of spreading your wings, it's doing exactly that which has made me a tropical fruit lover.
I love pineapple. For as long as I can remember, it's always been my number one fruit without a doubt and it is without peer in the tropics. So juicy, sweet and acidic. Absolutely amazing! Pineapple never disappoints on these types of trips. But that's not what I crave on these vacations.
That fruit would be papaya.
I am pretty sure it was Ecuador, but it may have been Zimbabwe or Botswana, that turned me on to papaya. I have to tell you that when it's right, it's the most delicious stuff in the world. It is also very, very difficult to explain why because it clearly doesn't have the same intense flavor as something like pineapple. But here goes anyway.
When it's right and perfectly ripe, papaya is a gorgeous, slightly muted orange color and you can slice through it with the lightest cut from the dullest knife. It's soft and silky smooth. It cuts so gorgeously. When you pop a piece in your mouth, the texture is almost flan-like; creamy and soft which almost completely dissolves with delicate pressure between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. The taste is not intense and it's not that sweet but it's refreshing and indulgent in absolutely the subtlest way. I love it. This is what I crave when I head to the tropics. Forget all the other fruits (well...maybe not pineapple). Papaya (or pawpaw in Africa) is IT.
We didn't have to work hard to find papaya in Costa Rica. They had it for breakfast or lunch at our hotels in both Tortuguero National Park and downtown San Jose. But papaya is not always as perfect as I have described above and certainly that was the case at Tortuguero. It took us getting back to San Jose to find the pawpaw that I love and we found it on the breakfast buffet at the Gran Hotel Costa Rica, which, as it turns out, is a Hilton property.
Now, I realize writing about a piece of fruit on a Hilton breakfast buffet seems completely un-romantic and not what global travel discovery is all about. And I wouldn't debate that at all. But the Hilton had the most perfect papaya, I'm telling you. Fruit quest over. Drop the mic. This was the place on this trip that fulfilled my papaya desire.
The best part about the Hilton's papaya was we stayed two nights, so after a few pieces of gorgeousness on day one, I may have gotten a little extra the next morning. Hey, when else am I going to get fruit this delicious? And...it's a buffet. I can get as much as I care to eat.
I can't say for sure when the next time I'm going to be in the tropics, but you know when I am that I'm going to be looking for some pawpaw on the breakfast table. So good.
How We Did It
I have found that locating great tasting fruit in the tropics isn't difficult at all and that the breakfast buffets at our hotels has been one of the most reliable sources of said great tasting fruit. Costa Rica was no exception to this rule.
If you really want some amazing tasting papaya at the Gran Hotel Costa Rica, you might need to be prepared to pay for it. The breakfast buffet there is a whopping 18,000 or so Colones, which translates to about $30. That's per person. That's a lot for breakfast in a country where the average desayuno can be had for a lot less than that pretty much everywhere. I should point out that breakfast is free for Hilton Honors Gold and Diamond members when you stay at the hotel. We do have such status, so that delicious papaya (along with everything else in their amazing spread) was completely free. The pineapple was pretty amazing too.
The rest of our fruit experience in Costa Rica was pretty much completely accidental. We didn't plan to find lychees on the way to Tortuguero or a giant fruit stand on the way to Carara. Just know that if you are heading to those places, you might be tempted to stop for some fruit on the way. I don't think you can miss the fruit stand near Carara and there seemed to be plenty of carts with lychees on the way to Tortuguero.
And if you don't like papaya or lychees or mangosteens, try something new. You never know what you will find and fall in love with.
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