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Alma de Café in the National Theater, downtown San Jose, was chosen by a British publication as one of the best coffee shops in the world. I’ve been there and it is a wonderful “Old World” coffee shop that would be at home anywhere in Europe and has fabulous coffee and pastries! I highly recommend it! Read about it’s new honor on Christopher Howard’s “Live in Costa Rica” Blog.
¡Pura Vida!
Above Canario Supermercado is a new little coffee shop overlooking the entrance to Atenas Mercado Central, bus station, and a busy street for people watching. See photo above. Just this one visit today and it is now in my top three coffee shops (called cafeterias here). (1) Crema y Nada, (2) Cafeteria by the church, and now (3) Cafeteria above Canario. (If the last two have names, they are not prominently displayed, but most things here are described by location as I just did.)
One of my retirement joys these days is slowly sipping 2 or 3 mugs of coffee every morning after breakfast, with breakfast or like today, after my cereal breakfast I walk to town and have a pastry and cup of coffee downtown while people watching or finishing today’s Washington Post on the Kindle. This is what retirement is like for me when not traveling! And of course my favorite and most common place to enjoy morning coffee is from my own terrace as seen on this cloudy morning in the photo below.
Living the Dream
¡Pura Vida!
And for those who think I never have anything negative to say about Costa Rica (and I seldom do) I will admit that one thing here that scares me is the Terciopelo, the Costa Rica name for what Americans call Fer de Lance snake (Bothrops asper). (Click Terciopelo link for English article in Tico Times) It is one of the most deadly snake bites in the world and unfortunately we have them living in my Roca Verde neighborhood. I know of two neighbors who have been bitten, both going outside in early morning barefoot (note that I will never do that). Both stepped on the snake (a sure way to get bitten!) and were rushed to the public clinic here for anti-venom shot and from there in ambulance to the public hospital in Alajuela for further treatment. They are both fine now, but it was a big scare for both with swollen leg and a lot of pain. One guy had an allergic reaction to the anti-venom and got extra allergy treatment for the hives it gave him. See Wikipedia article on the snake.
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| In yesterday’s effort to be descriptive, this is the coffee shop mentioned. That’s my empty cup next to the coffee-maker on my table. La Cafetería (The Coffee Shop) Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| And my sidewalk cafe view of Central Park across the street. Atenas, Costa Rica |
Just another quiet Saturday morning in a little coffee-farming town in central Costa Rica.
My idea of Retired in Costa Rica, THIS BLOG
quiet
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| New Photo Book About Atenas Click image or this caption to go to a PREVIEW of the book online. You can thumb through the book page by page for free. Just keep clicking the pages. |
Now that I have finished it, I just realized I left out the Farmers’ Market & Central Mercado. Oh well, I guess every book has to be imperfect! 🙂 Enjoy anyway! And I will do more!
And check out the “official” video on Atenas, just 2 1/2 min.
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| I like to include breakfast at La Casita del Cafe with a view to the ocean. |
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| And we took the tour of El Toledo Coffee Farm, the only two on the tour! We then ate Sunday dinner with his family and really enjoyed that as much! That is John Rasbury on left from Williamson County, Tennessee. Gabriel is the oldest son of the coffee farmer and does the tours now. My friend. |
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| I also took John to Zoo Ave, City Mall, La Garita plant nurseries, house hunting (his main goal), and lots of restaurants! 🙂 4 days here. |
I did not know John from my many years living in Nashville but met him on the Chris Howard Relocation or Living in Costa Rica Tour in 2014. We have kept in touch since. He is not able to retire yet, but plans to come here when he does and is starting to invest in rental property here for his future income. Like Reagan, his favorite place was sitting on my terrace.
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| Gabriel was our guide at El Toledo Coffee Farm |
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| His Mom made the coffee samples |
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| And we decided our favorite before he told us which was dark roast, light roast or medium roast |
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| Then we watched the beans roast |
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| Which were earlier sun-dried like this |
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| We learned how organic “natural” farming is better than just organic |
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| The purpose of many different kinds of trees among the coffee plants |
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| And ate a typical Tico lunch at Gabriel’s aunt’s house. A great total experience! |
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| Reagan continues to say that sitting on my terrace is his favorite place. I never show the driveway in photos, he noted; so here it is! Not picturesque! I only use it when I have a rent car, like this week. |
Tonight – Sunday night – we are at the Hampton Inn Airport where we will be picked up at 5:30 in the morning for our trip to Tortuguero on the Caribbean Coast. Our big adventure starts with the van trip to the boat dock in the morning, driving over a mountain range and into the coastal rainforest for and hour and half boat trip through the jungle to our Laguna Lodge.
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| At the entrance to my favorite Supermercado is this little sidewalk cafe for excellent coffee & pastries (Banana Nut Bread my favorite) and the best deal on ice cream in town! Half the price of POPS Ice Cream Shop. That’s my coffee and carrot cake at the first table with my shopping bags. I walk to here and mostly walk home, unless big load/rain, then a taxi Coopeatenas is the farmers’ cooperative super market & farm store out back |
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| And fun, friendly Ticas behind the counter with Santa on the Cash Register! Helados is ice cream. They have sandwiches too! And Gourmet Coffee! Many of their bakery items are from Crema y Nata, my favorite bakery. |
And that cash register sign says in literal English translation:
“I wish I could show you the little village where I was born. It’s so lovely there…I used to think it too small to spend a life in, but now I’m not so sure.” ― Mary Kelly
Yep! That’s me! I was born in Warren, Arkansas, a small farming town like Atenas, Costa Rica and never thought I would ever live there again! Now I do sorta – well, here it’s coffee instead of tomato farms and Alajuela Province is a lot different from Arkansas and Costa Rica is another world from the states. But I do live in a small town again! 🙂
On the walk through my neighborhood I just couldn’t include all the images, so here are two more that a few of our homes have as their vista, the pastoral farm hills around Atenas. And the third is a similar view from my bedroom and office/guest room.
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| Some have farms, cattle, coffee, or other use while other hills are investments. Hopefully they will not all be developed as the wildness around us disappears! |
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| Some have roads over them like above, for what reason I know not. Some of these hills are coffee farms or were in earlier times. |
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| And from my office/guest room before I added fishtail palms for privacy. |
And how appropriate that on the day I post these pastoral scenes Sarah Bartlett at McKendree sends this link to a visual version of Ode to Joy by Beethoven.
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| This tree has red or purple ones, while some are turning yellow or orange. Shot from my balcony, Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica |
One website lists 4 different cultivars of mangoes in Costa Rica:
This Ojochal blog declares Mango “King of the Fruit World” listing health benefits and describing the 4 cultivars.
Nature’s Pride (a distributor) has lots of recipes and some “How to Prepare” videos
This “Fruit of the Month” article has a couple of mango recipes.
I have been eating a mango a day recently and keep a bottle of mango pulp in the frig for making one of four smoothie-type fruit drinks I have at least one of every day: mango, guanabana, mora (blackberry), and pina (pineapple). The mangoes that fall from the trees are bruised on one side and I cut that side off before eating the rest of it. I can get better ones in the market that aren’t bruised but were picked ripe or near-ripe. There is nothing better than a tree-ripened mango! I said the same thing when I lived in The Gambia.
And by the way – I signed the contract on the rental house Tuesday. Move a week from Thursday, 23 April. The virtual tour of my new house is still on the Realtor’s site for now. It will be taken down eventually.
And for you STARBUCKS COFFEE LOVERS: Starbucks Costa Rica Coffee Research Farm is
supposedly trying to help coffee growers raise disease-resistant coffee plants IF they will sell to Starbucks at ridiculously low prices – American ingenuity or greed? Coffee farmers have to eat too!
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| Gabriel (our Juan Valdez) teaches us about the natural way to grow coffee at El Toledo Coffee Farm, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Beans go through roasting machine to become either light, medium, or dark roasted. We tasted each and chose our favorite before knowing which roast. |
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| The coffee farm pet Olive-throated Parakeets got my attention of course! Then a traditional Tico Lunch of beans, rice, veggies, salad, plantains, fish |
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| In Sarchi, Kevin got a taste of the rainforest after photographing some of the colorful oxcarts made here along with furniture, etc. |
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| A typical Costa Rican Oxcart made in Sarchi |
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| Sarchi Church |
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| Tico family in front of Grecia Church Made of metal in Belgium in 1800’s and reassembled in Grecia! |
We got a little further away from Atenas today and will go even further tomorrow as we head for Poas Volcano and La Paz Waterfalls.