Before we reached our goal for the day on January 22rd: Las Lajas
we slammed on our brakes, took a U-turn on the way down the mountains because we sped by a road stand with ripe bananas. We hadn't seen ripe bananas, for, what is it now?..........possibly month, basically leaving Mexico...ok, maybe a little exaggerated, there were some in San Jose and some in the bigger cities, but, really, I would have never guessed that I would possibly lust for ripe bananas riding through the tropics. It isn't only because Chiquita and other corporations took over the land (some, for sure), but Nicaragua, Costa Rica doesn't seem to have much agriculture at all. The locals plant their own food in their back yard and the markets sell mostly canned food. The produce sections (if there is one) have mostly roots, onions and garlic and GREEN bananas- looking very sad, leaving us wondering what people eat? The restaurants serve food which they believe tourists like, which is mostly chicken and all of it fried. Traveling on a bike needing good food, we find ourselves starved for a variety of fresh vegetables and fruit - who would have thought those would be laking in countries were everything grows? Healthy eating is not a priority in Central America as it seems. Chips, fried food, canned and processed foods are readily available at every store big and small and the majority of the populations - especially the women are obese already at a very young age.
Ok, so, here we are again...we were told the PanAmerican Highway is flat as "piss on a plate" all the way to Panama City - yeah, right......
No problem, after eating some real yummy fruits which included ripe bananas, pineapple, mango and papaya we didn't have too far to go La Laja. Keep the water on the right.....that way we know we are back at our home Ocean: Pacific. Much hotter, less humid and gentle, yes, this time of year the Pacific is much calmer than the Caribbean and we got to bathe in the gentle warm waters.
