Glimpses Afar

I traveled to Costa Rica a few years ago on a trip for my high school's Bio Technology program. We were there for a whole week, getting a taste of the local culture and wildlife and environment, and of course, the food. Everyday we were there, there were two foods that were always served for the meal, three times a day, everyday. Rice and beans. The rice was boiled or steamed to a light, fluffy grain and spiced with limes or pepper or some exotic spice beyond my ability to name. The beans were black or pinto, the kind of bean depended on the meal with which we were eating it. But even after eating the same thing seven days in a row, three times a day, a total of twenty one times in the course of a week, by the end I was still not sick of it. In fact, I craved it more. More than the famous coffee or the exotic fruits that I sampled while on my week long journey, I wanted to try those basics again and again. It turns out, finding out about a culture can be as simple as trying the foods from that place that you are sampling. The culture of Costa Rica is a simple sturdy one, like the rice and beans that so many of the people in that country depend upon. They are cheap and basic, uninteresting to the eye. They require a taste, a chance to be given to them, instead of judging the culture by its cover. Once you taste the culture, like the rice and beans of Costa Rica, you can see how diverse a basic food, or a supposedly forgettable culture can be. The rice and beans are seasoned and delicious, cooked differently by every cook that makes them. It may be cooked by every family in the country, but the perception and the interpretation is something that varies from household to household. In just that way, a country that can seem forgettable can be filled, like Costa Rica is, with beautiful scenery, creatures, and weather that varies over the range of the country. Costa Rica maybe a poor country, who's staple foods may be something that seems average and bland, but just a taste of that country can leave you begging for more. And the people, the basics of that country, are more spectacular and original, than the more extraordinary tourist areas, the way the rice and beans are more spectacular and memorable than the exotic foods and coffee. But in the end, it is the combination of the spectacular and the regular that creates a country, the way that rice, beans, fruit and coffee describe Costa Rica as a country. A beautiful, never boring or bland place.