Town

Carlos and I reaaaaaally need to make a trip to town. We have no food in the house. I think our fridge currently contains the following: half a box of milk, 2 tortillas, a blob of rice pudding, mustard, ketchup, and water. Isn’t that pathetic! It is such a pain to get to town though. We take a taxi back and forth so that we can bring a lot of groceries at one time (we try to get food only once a month or at least enough for 3 weeks).

The town’s name is Puerto Viejo, Sarapiqui and it isn’t much. Puerto is about a 5-minute cab ride from the station and the town is actually pretty well stocked for being out in the country. There are 3 banks, 3 grocery stores, 2 ice cream stores, and a bunch of “junk” stores. Everything is located along a single road that passes through town. We usually buy our food at the market called La Viña -- this store probably has the biggest variety of food. As for meals, Carlos and I don’t have the widest diet breadths. We usually eat: masamun curry (I brought some curry paste from the states and it lasts forever), spaghetti, patoux chinois (mashed potatoes, ground beef, and sweet corn all mixed together), quesadillas, tostadas, soup and salad, nachos, sandwiches, tonkatsu, and coconut chicken wraps. We don’t get any “exotic” food items here (there are only 2 types of cheese in the store: squeaky and cheddar) so it’s hard to think of meals to eat. Good thing I love noodles!

I don’t think Carlos and I will be able to make a trip to Puerto today but tonight we are going to a dinner on-station to welcome back a couple of long-term researchers. Yay, we get to put off town for another day!