Ceviche

After such a busy and tiring three days, I looked forward to being able to take it easy today. Catch up on my journals, maybe take a nap.

We returned the rental car on time and everything was fine. I’m now totally satisfied with this experience. It’s always a little nerve-wracking to rent here because the roads are so bad and you never know if the rental company is going to charge you for some tiny ding caused by a flying rock or insane pothole. But this one-man upstart operation was very reasonable and you certainly cannot beat the price. I still can’t believe we rented an Isuzu Rodeo, in excellent condition, for $30 a day.

The guy that owns the rental business, Steven, gave us a ride home. He’s had the business for about 6 months now. He got started in the rental business with a gringo from Illinois that he worked for, but the guy didn’t put much into maintaining the cars, so there were a lot of break-downs. Customers started complaining and even taking legal action. Steven hated this aspect and decided to start his own rental business. His fleet currently has about 8 cars and he’s planning on adding a couple with more seating (like 7 or 8 passenger). If anyone is planning a trip to Costa Rica and will be renting a car, contact me and I’ll hook you up with Steven. Good guy.

We took it easy the rest of the afternoon. I even got my nap.

Around 5 pm, Chino drove us all to the home of Juan Pablo and Hisela, the sister of Carolina (Ricardo’s wife…I know, it’s confusing). Juan Pablo made ceviche (seh-VEE-cheh) with cobia. Ceviche is an appetizer popular in Latin America consisting of raw fish marinated in citrus (usually lime) juice. The action of the acid in the lime juice "cooks" the fish, thereby firming the flesh and turning it opaque. Onions, tomatoes and green peppers are often added to the marinade. Only very fresh fish should be used for this dish. Ramón said low-oil fish like cobia or shark is best. I read that red snapper, pompano, and sole are the most common fish for ceviche. I was first introduced to it in 1994 when Ramón ate it during our beach trip. When he described it to me, I thought it sounded disgusting, but I’d lately been wanting to try it. So tonight I got my chance. It was good. Not lick-the-bowl-clean-and-beg-for-more good, but tasty enough. Juan Pablo just made one big bowl for everyone, so I only ate one small bowl of it. I was proud that Sofia tasted mine and wanted a bowl of her own, which she ate. Alex took one bite and decided he didn’t really like it.

The “party” lasted a couple of hours and Hisela’s parents, who also live in Pavas, drove us home. Cristina crashed with Isabella and I stayed up with Ramón and Maritza for a while. Maritza is taking an English class, so Ramón and I helped her with her homework. It was fun. She was supposed to describe these drawings of four different people. We were making suggestions and couldn’t help but throw lots of inappropriate but creative details in there, most of which I can’t print here. For example, one picture showed a woman writing a letter. The typical description would probably be something like “The woman is 35 years old. She is of average weight. She likes to write.” We were making suggestions like “The woman is of average weight, but she has a tendency to gain during her period. She fancies young men. She particularly enjoys writing submissions to lurid magazines.” Of course Maritza didn’t understand everything we were suggesting and was mostly blowing us off for just being silly, and rightfully so. But we did convince her to write that one of the people, a sharp-dressed man in a suit with a cell phone and a laptop, was gay. Her teacher will probably get a kick out of that.