Van Boughner

We were up early this morning to put out luggage for the bus at 7 am.
Breakfast was watermelon and pineapple again this morning, but tasted
great nonetheless. Great pineapple here in Costa Rica, it makes it
easy to enjoy eating fruit. I do miss oranges though. At home in
California Phillip and I have been eating oranges all week for
breakfast together, and we haven’t had any oranges or orange juice
since arriving in Costa Rica yet.

Interesting how we crave what we are used to. But that does beg the
observation that if you can make yourself used to something, anything,
then you will crave it or continuing to follow the same routine. That
probably works for eating raw foods as well. So let’s hope that when
we return home from this trip we will be continually craving raw
fruits and vegetables.

In any case, my plan when I return home is to continue eating raw
foods 100% through the marathon on March 2nd, so that I can experience
and report on what it is like to run a marathon after eating raw foods
exclusively for 3 weeks prior.

The bus ride to Rio Chirripo Retreat took a little over 5 hours. As
we left San Jose, the cityscapes turned into landscapes and the
country around us became so much more beautiful. We stopped a couple
of times, the first at a great spot on the mountain with a view to
which the pictures here don’t really do justice. At 10000 feet, the
air smelt and felt great.

The second stop was about 45 minutes from the retreat, in the town of
San Isidro, the closest large town to the retreat. We bought a bit of
fruit for a snack. These were nectarines and grenadios that we enjoyed
the hot sun for a few minutes in the park in front of the church.

Grenadios are a new fruit that Phillip and I hadn’t seen before. Sort
of like a passion fruit, but bigger, orange yellow on the outside,
with green goopy seeds on the inside that are sweet and tart at the
same time. It looks like of like eating brains. Pretty tasty though.

Despite the snack, we were quite hungry when we arrived at the retreat
at about 1pm, and lunch made an amazing impression thanks to the
appetite factor. It was banana smoothies (just bananas and water) at
first, followed by bananas wrapped in lettuce leaves (if desired), and
papaya. Even better papaya than at the hotel (and I thought that was
pretty good).

Phillip said he was craving bananas, and just ate the smoothie and some
bananas. I think that might have been Phillip’s first-ever mono meal.
I thought it was pretty cool that it’s what he naturally wanted. And I
was loving the fact that I could eat as much fruit as I like.

After lunch Dr. Graham led an orientation session. We each had an
opportunity to introduce ourselves, and it was pretty special to hear
other people’s reasons for coming to the retreat center for the
walking tour. It’s a great group of people, and I like everyone here.

Dinner was simple. We started with an orange juice and mango smoothie.
I understand it was about 60% mango and 40% orange juice. The mango
portion was actually squeezings I found out later, ie. after cutting
the mangos down the sides of the pit (to create the big “halves” that
we ate later in the meal), they saved the middle bits that still had
flesh on them. They squeezed these by hand to create the mango juice
and fiber that went into the smoothies.

Oh, so I just gave it away, but the second course were the big pieces
of mango. Best mango I’ve had in a good while. The ones at home are
hard to find this sweet, even when I let them ripen for a long time in
the kitchen.

Third course: Chayote diced up (a squash-like vegetable that when
diced this way looks kind of like rice), covered in a blended sauce
made from the tomatoes and red peppers I saw drying in the sun earlier.
Really nice taste in the tomatoes. The Chayote is rather flavorless,
so the taste really comes from what you put on top. Quite a pleasing
combination when you wrap it in a lettuce leaf and make a little
burrito.

At the end of the meal I wish I’d left a little of the orange juice
and mango smoothie to drink like a little dessert. I still had that
urge for dessert and it would have fit the bill perfectly. Overall,
meal satisfaction however could be rated as very high.