Samara


Tres Hermanas BBQ and Grill. As the sign says, “Where the bull is, that’s where the meat is!”  And it was pretty tasty. This is at the junction where you turn right to head the last hour and a half into Samara.


Samara Playa

 

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Another haven for Steve on the way to Samara…finally cigars!

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.

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Note the stylish shorts and sensible shirt.

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Yeah, this is the real deal.

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Earlier on this trip I milked a cow for the first time.  Here I am rolling a cigar, also for the first time.

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Placing the cigars into the press.

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Yes, that *is* a cigar he’s holding *and* he’s happy to see you!

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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!

Steve’s Mango Valley Photos

Ah, Hotel Mango Valley, possibly the single nicest place we stayed on this trip.   Just outside the town of Grecia in Costa Rica’s central valley, and about 40 minutes from the airport in San Jose.  Of course, we met some kids from Portlandia there in the pool…  Our cabin had the best view in the place.  Not all the big inside, but nicely constructed with kitchenette, a jet-tub, friendly staff and modern plumbing!  $80/night, very happy to go back there someday.  On weekends the Soda up the street delivers for free, and frankly it was pretty darn good.

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Joyce found a great coffee farm tour for us – Cafe El Toledo.  Over the last 20 years they’ve slowly converted the farm from conventional fertilizers + pesticides agriculture to certified organic and then to full bio-dynamic.  What the heck does that mean?  Our tour was lead by Gabriel, current owner of the farm.  The switch to organic was driven by his father getting sick from the chemicals they were using at that time.  The switch to organic dropped production at their farm and the family got by with odd jobs instead of going back to conventional farming which had put Dad in the hospital.  There has to be a better way, they thought.  Fast forward 20 years and their farm looks more like a forest.  A mixture of coffee plants, fruit trees, vegetables and shade trees provides conditions that naturally controls pests and fertilizes the soil.  This combination also reduces the labor needed to run the farm.  While it’s true that they get fewer coffee beans per acre than conventional ag, the farm is also producing other products that the family both consumes and sells.

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The tasting room.

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Yup, roasting coffee beans.

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Walking the farm.

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Mandarins off one of the trees among the coffee.

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If I lived in Costa Rica, I’d probably want one of these.  And a scooter.  And a machete.  It would be like some kind of “Gringo Tico Starter Kit”.

Much more about their farm and how it works at their web site: Cafe El Toledo.

What I left out of the story so far is how took a wrong turn on the way to El Toledo and were driving up the mountain on some kind of goat path, being uncertain if this was or was not a road to a coffee plantain as we’d never been to one before.  Finally we flagged down a police car coming down the mountain, and yes, we were on the wrong road and yes, we got a police escort over to the farm.

Afterwards we sought out the town of Sarchi, featured in this blog post…  After that we were pooped and rolled back to Grecia, and then the hotel.  Hung out with a fun couple from Montreal that night.

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Their cathedral came over from Belgium as some kind of erector set – it’s all metal and you can see the rivets that hold it together.

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Sadly, we weren’t appropriately dressed, so we didn’t proceed past the entrance.  Possibly no one would have cared about our shorts, but sometimes it’s best to err on being polite.

Coffee tour at El Toledo in Atenas

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.

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Oh yeah, forgot about this photo op for Steve.

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The kids enjoyed getting coffee husks dumped on them to play with.

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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.

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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 .

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We negotiated buying painted coffee burlap bags and coffee from their farm. A nice family indeed.

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Grecia to Hotel Mango Valley

It was a slog from Turrialba to Grecia through mountainous windy roads and San Jose traffic but we arrived in the afternoon to the cabina number seven at Hotel Mango Valley which was a wonderful respite up in the hills above Grecia.

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Hard to see in this photo, but the widest rainbow ever presented itself over the mountain.

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Oh! Watch out for the sugar cane truck on the way up.

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Cartago or why visit Central America and not go to Fortress Walmart…

Yes it had to be done. We spent 4 days on the Caribbean without chairs so the Mecca of everything appeared ….Walmart. We won’t be caught short on the Pacific coast. But there is so much more….

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The real deal!  From Spain!  THE PUERCO MEJOR.  Let the snacking begin…

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“YIPY”

Fortress Walmart is all parking on the first floor.

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But the main reason to stop in Cartago is the most religious pilgrimage in Costa Rica…Basilica Nuestra de Los Angeles

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More Turrialba

The Turrialba Bed and Breakfast has a very lovely courtyard.

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…and here’s a sweet little park in the center of town.

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Not such great photos, but I quite liked their modernist Catholic church.

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Lovely live music during mass that sunday.