We arrived in Livingston to find that the hostel we were thinking of staying in was booked on our walk back toward the center of town we passed another small hotel, the Dolfin La Posada. It had a pool and looked extremely clean, after discovering it was only slightly over our normal budget we decided to stay there, it proved to be the nicest hotel we have stayed at in Central America. Livingston didn’t have a lot to recommend itself to either Amy or Turgay except the meal they had the first night. A traditional Garifuna (an ethnic group of mixed African and Caribbean origin who live primarily along the coast of central America) seafood stew called Tapado. This stew is served in enormous portions and is well worth the slightly expensive price (if you are on a tight budget it would easily feed two people).
A basic recipe follows:
• 5 cloves of Garlic finely minced
• 1 large onions diced
• 3 or 4 sweet peppers
• Half pound of small shrimp peeled and cleaned
• 3 to 4 small cleaned fish (left whole, heads intact)
• Several small crabs washed and cleaned
• 1 pound of shellfish de-bearded and scrubbed (they used mussels)
• 1.5 pounds of yucca, sliced and boiled
• 2 to 3 sliced cooking bananas
• 3 dry coconuts to make coconut milk, or the equivalent amount of tinned coconut milk about 3 cans
• 1 Large bunch of cilantro
Sauté onions in a large pot until translucent,
Add peppers and garlic and continue to cook for a minute or 2
Place all the seafood into the pot with the onions etc and pour salted water over it till it is covered.
Put it over a low flame, and when the water starts evaporating, add yucca and bananas.
Add coconut milk and salt and pepper to taste.
Leave to simmer 15-20 minutes without covering.
In Livingston we also came across fellow traveler Chris again and made plans to travel from there to Rio Dulce together.
