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Costa Rica · Spanish

Costa Rica

Cloud forest and Pacific, in no particular hurry

Sofía

Your host · Spanish

Sofía

Rainforest host

Sofía is a rainforest host who treats mist like a language. She will make you wait for the quetzal, drink coffee the slow way, and leave the jaguar as a rumour the forest keeps.

Costa Rica is rainforest folded into a country: cloud forest, Pacific dry wood, and a Caribbean slope that never quite dries. Cas juice and chorreado coffee are as Tico as the sloth in the cecropia, and the quetzal still crosses the mist when the aguacatillo fruits. Pura vida is not a slogan here so much as a pace.

Field notes

10 fruits

  • Cas

    Cas

    Psidium friedrichsthalianum

    Costa Rica's own sour guava, a small yellow fruit too tart to eat neat and perfect for fresco. Blended with water and sugar it becomes the most Tico glass on a hot afternoon, sharp, floral, and uniquely Central American.

  • Peach palm fruit

    Pejibaye

    Bactris gasipaes

    Orange palm fruits boiled until starchy and served with mayonnaise or a squeeze of lime. Pejibaye is old Costa Rican food, closer to a potato than a peach, sold from roadside carts in season.

  • Pineapple

    Piña

    Ananas comosus

    Costa Rica is one of the world's great pineapple growers, and the fruit at a feria is smaller, wetter, and more fragrant than the export crate. Eaten in spears with salt and lime, it is the country's gold.

  • Banana

    Banano

    Musa acuminata

    The crop that built the Caribbean coast, still hanging in green geometry under plastic bags. Sweet banano and cooking plátano are everyday fruit, eaten out of hand or fried for breakfast.

  • Mango

    Mango

    Mangifera indica

    From March the Pacific side rains mangoes, eaten green with salt and chili or ripe and dripping. Roadside stands sell them in bags, and the air around a laden tree is a season you can smell.

  • Papaya

    Papaya

    Carica papaya

    Breakfast fruit of the Central Valley and the coasts, orange-fleshed, seeded, and often served with a squeeze of lime. A tree can fruit in a year, which is why every backyard seems to have one.

  • Soursop

    Guanábana

    Annona muricata

    A spiny green fruit whose white pulp blends into the creamiest of jugos naturales, tart and floral. Guanábana is a feria prize, sold whole or already strained into a bag with a straw.

  • Passion fruit

    Maracuyá

    Passiflora edulis

    Wrinkled purple shells full of seedy, perfumed pulp, juiced into a drink that wakes a humid morning. Maracuyá and cas share the granizado cart; both taste like Costa Rica refusing to be bland.

  • Rambutan

    Mamón chino

    Nephelium lappaceum

    Hairy red fruit sold in bunches from Caribbean-slope stands, the translucent flesh slipping off a seed. Introduced from Asia, mamón chino has become a rainy-season habit from Limón to the ferias of San José.

  • Cacao

    Cacao

    Theobroma cacao

    Pods ripen on the trunk in Talamanca and on Pacific farms, the white pulp sucked off the beans before fermentation. Costa Rica's cacao is small-farm chocolate and a fruit first, a bar later.