Visited every indoor place we could in town due to the rain. Twilligate Museum, Durell Museum, art gallery, Auk Island Winery…all fruit and berry wine but great labels. Stopped at D&J Seafood for lunch and tried fisherman’s brewis -made with hard bread biscuits soaked and mashed with cod, fired pieces of pork fat called scrunchions on top. I love them! Molasses bread and partridge berry jam, A local favorite.
It always helps to bring your chef with you of course. The fish store was a bounty of fresh seafood – smoked salmon, scallops, snow crab, fish cakes. Greens with apples, walnuts, gorgonzola and kraft vinaigrette (the only option in this part of the universe). Mashed with garlic, spinach, peppers and onions with garlic butter sauce. Wine is expensive here but we splurged on a sweet Chilean red wine for this fine dinner.
Iceberg Man tour in Twillingate. Bundle up! We got up close to some amazing icebergs. They do make it cold out though. All look different with viens of pure blue ice and volcanic ash. Some grounded or flipped. They pulled some ice up for us to taste and take some home for a cocktail later.
We arrive in St Johns on June 4th and head to Clarenville for a two night stay so we can visit the Bonavista peninsula.We visited Trinity a cute little historic town. Then off to Port Rexton to take the Skerwink trail listed as one of the best trails in North America. 5.3. KM, lot of ups and downs but beautiful and we spotted our first iceberg in the distance.
And here we are in Steve’s carport. Betsy Rose just fits.
In our search for a retro camper to be used as a sewing studio we happened upon this Shasta reissue of the 1961 model in Tualatin OR.
We saw many unusual plants in the Selvatura reserve in the cloud forest as we walked over 8 suspension bridges over and though the canopy. It was an unusual sunny day. The adventure starts much before the preserve as you must traverse over some unusually bad roads, if you can call them that. And try to avoid the dogs, horses, bikes, pedestrians, motorbikes, giant trucks…..
Hot lips flower!
And a millipede. Which is good, no bite. Centipedes aren’t much fun as they bite.
And the eyes must have been on us as they have one snake for every two trees. And they had a lot of trees. Luckily we saw no vipers today. But we did find a slothful sloth.
They have a lot of giant plants we pay good money for tiny versions of.
And some sort of big wild turkey.
It really is a magical place. And Miguel did an excellent tour for us!
A tough day at the beach. Starting with our homemade breakfast of pâtécones and egg scramble. It’s hard to pass up the bounty of fruits and veggies on the cheap. And luckily I brought my own pâtécones maker. Here’s a clue we found on the intarwubs. Instead of frying them *twice*, boil them for 10-15 minutes before doing the big squish on them.
Packed up all we needed for a beach day only 3 miles south of town…the beach to ourselves. The coconut delivery man came once with some refreshing beverages.
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Now I know why they call them howlers….
About a half-hour down Route 1 from Grecia headed towards Samara as we crested the hill at the tire-scorching speed of 30KPH (standard Coasta Rican truck speed) I spotted a sign for hand-rolled cigars. Cigars? I’ve only found one place in the entire country so far that had *any* and here they are rolling their own???
We eased to the side of the road to investigate. Inside the rather basic establishment we were pleased to find two friendly men working with tobacco. Where’s the quilt store, Joyce wants to know?
Within moments when it was clear we were customers the older gent was lighting up a free sample (sorry – I forget his name) and gave us a tour. They claim to be rolling actual cuban tobacco – cuban or not they certainly had a cooler full of fine leaves ready for rolling (for those of you who don’t know, growing tobacco is just the first step. Then there’s the fermenting and aging etc. These guys were working with tobacco ready for cigars). We got the 50 cent tour, including inspecting tobacco seeds (tiny!) seeing a few tobacco sprouts, looking at the equipment and watching the torcedor roll the raw materials into the final product, todo a mano! Joyce was rewarded for her patience with a bracelet made from the veins of the tobacco leaf.
Who are the heck are these guys almost in the middle of nowhere doing working on cigars? There’s got to be more to the story but we had miles/klicks to turn, hours of ass-sitting in the War Rig on the way to wherever it was we were going, and on top of that, my Spanish is still muy pobre… There was a few newspaper articles posted on the wall, but I didn’t get a chance to try my hand at translating them, so the answer will continue to be a mystery until I remember to Google the whole thing to make sure we didn’t imagine it during a Costa Rican highway fugue state.
Note the stylish shorts and sensible shirt.
Yeah, this is the real deal.
Earlier on this trip I milked a cow for the first time. Here I am rolling a cigar, also for the first time.
Placing the cigars into the press.
Yes, that *is* a cigar he’s holding *and* he’s happy to see you!
What a fun surprise! Could they be using cuban tobacco verdad? Could be, but in any case I got a bunch of hand-rolled cigars direct from the producer for $3/per which is the bare minimum for such an object in Portland, and we got a good story, so I’m calling it a win either way. If you saw the prices they ask for certified Cuban cigars at the duty-free you’d clutch your chest and reach for your nitro heart pills.
Pura Vida!
And the biggest oxcart. We also found the painted oxcart type bar…and some actual artists.
This was a great tour but getting there required a police escort. We used waze to navigate but one wrong turn took us up a barely passable rutted path where we were lucky to find the policia coming down the hill. After some English Spanish negotiation they decided to escort us to the coffee finca. They got out of the car with a clipboard then but we feigned silly American and waved them off. Phew….no charge.
This tour is highly recommended. They have become a bio diverse organic farm due to health issues and learning how to grow many crops to minimize the need for chemicals and still make a profit. And we learned a lot about coffee and how to drink it. There are 70,000 coffee farms in the area and they average 7 acres. El Toledo is 60 % coffee and 40 % other crops that they use or sell… Cashew, many fruits, herbs etc. and the coffee and lunch was exceptional . Gabriel took us through and his parents started the farm.
Oh yeah, forgot about this photo op for Steve.
The kids enjoyed getting coffee husks dumped on them to play with.
A type of square banana. Yes you heard that correcto.
And this is a cashew tree. We tasted the stem, the nut thing at the end is poisonous until dried and roasted.
And this is the lunch they prepare from what they grow on the farm including tumeric in the rice. The squash salad was chayote, the patty was yucca. Muy Bueno .
We negotiated buying painted coffee burlap bags and coffee from their farm. A nice family indeed.
