Pueblo

Definitely an interesting day. Watching Yanks/Boston right now in the lounge. Started out normal as usual, got in some breakfast and computer work early on. Spent a lot of time just goofing around, oh well. Grabbed lunch and finalized plans for our trip into town this afternoon.

Before lunch, Andrea told Amanda and I about a drink you could buy at a heladería near the bus stop in Puerto Viejo. It’s called a “Winston Churchill” she said. So the taxi got here on time and we rushed across the bridge. Squeezed four of us into a small Nissan something and shot off for the 4km trip to town.

Dropped the other two off at the supermarket and continued onto the ferretería, or hardware store. Lots of cool stuff inside, lots of those things you know have been in the store since it opened that nobody has a need for. Amanda got some gloves and rope and other things for bats, I got WD-40 to take good care of the tripod.

Left from there to run a crazy set of errands including fabric and other things. Amanda was trying to buy a lens cloth, but then we realized that nobody carried them and that glasses were a rarity among Ticos. Used my first ATM in a long time, totally forgot about entering a PIN, a guy from the bank had to come out and remind me after the machine didn’t spit out any Colones. Pretty embarrassing since a line was forming.

Walking down the street, it was very similar to Park St. in Hartford; lots of people not doing much of anything and those businesses that have no way of self-sustaining themselves. Really cheap stuff though. Amanda bargained with this one seamstress to sew her 24 bags for bats with ties for 5,000 colones, or about $10.

Never found our other tripmates although we looked around kind of hard. Went to a supermarket where I bought some Windex, paper towels, Q-tips, and Gatorade. Now back to my boy Winston Churchill.

We found the store near the bus stop and went in. I asked the girl working if they had a drink called the Winston Churchill. She said no and gave me this weird look and goes to help another customer. At this point I assume some grand prank was played on us. As the girl is making a drink for this other guy she keeps looking back at me, then Amanda is reading the menu and points out “Eskimo Churchill” for 550 colones (a buck!).

So it turns out the whole time we were looking and thinking, she was making an Eskimo Churchill for the other guy, and everything fell back into place. An Eskimo Churchill (?!?!) (whatever that means) begins with a layer of red flavor slushy. After that a couple scoops of powdered milk, and another slushy layer. On top of that, a few squirts of condensed milk, then a scoop of your choice of ice cream. Disgusting, right?

Actually, really delicious. I’ve included a picture. When you get it all mixed up, it’s quite a sugary, very-dairy flavor explosion. Next time you’re in the neighborhood, pick one up. Really intense thunderstorm got started around 3:30, so we hopped in a taxi and headed back to the station where it still hasn’t rained in 2 days.

Had a little time to dry off/put my new supplies away. Watched the first three innings of the game and left for dinner with New York up 5-nil. Jeter passed Dimaggio on the all-time Yankees hit list tonight, quite an accomplishment. Had some sort of spare ribs for dinner (I’m convinced it was peccary), and met a famous ecologist/photographer who got his Ph.D. from my advisor’s husband at UConn.

One inning to go, then maybe some laundry. I always tell myself I have nothing to talk about when I start a post, but look at it grow, over 7,000 words so far. There’s a long story about moving to cabinas, but I’ll spare you that. Good news that comes out of it is that I’ll probably get to move to a cabina tomorrow morning as part of some mass-relocation going on. All this business gets done by word of mouth, so it’s taken a while to find it out.

After lunch, we have a long afternoon/evening of fieldwork in the plot lined up, hopefully not too much rain. Long boring post, my bad.

BP