Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Good trade...


...would you trade these for these? Hell ya!
Ten minutes from us, lay an incredible Mango Forest which is passed on our way to Nosara. Finally I made us stop and talk to "the guys" workin there, ya see prime Mango season is April, more than a month away. However, as with any other crop, nothing ripens on the same day and when shipping overseas, one picks early anyhow. So w/ me and my next to zilch Spanish, I figure out it is ok to drive thru the trees and back to something. I tell Marina back at the quad and she begins to assume there is a house back there. I did not hear anything about a "casa"? Heading along this deeply rutted, decades old tractor track with long beautiful diffused canopy light and Mangos dangling about. We go and go, then Marina hears a whistle. "Se vende Mangos?", I say to the three guys resting in true farm fashion--on a tractor fender, in the grass and on the trailer-- with crates of plucked Mango scattered about. In the end we have 7 yummy looking softball sized fruits, which, he says should be ripe in 3-4 days and he would like "trece coca-cola" of "grande" size and he would like them today, "esta tarde". We head home, unload and eat lunch, then back w/ three 1.5 litre cokes which cost 3,000 colones(less than $6). Track em down again and they are smiley. Seems even a bit surprised, maybe he meant--one 3 litre coke? Now they have 4.5 litres worth. Regardless he comes over with four more Mangos and we exchange greetings and handshakes from a man that Marina's partial Spanish can barely understand. Feeling like happy little kids, a guy at the wagon says "oy" and motions us to stop. Brings over a crate and fills our rear quad crate(38 Mangos). Everyone is smiling in "grande" fashion now. "Pura Vida, Buenas, Muchas Gracias" and more handshakes.
We are feeling perhaps like a Sandollar sized baby Turtle that made it to Sea, might feel?
Our crate full, his empty and all hearts brimming. Now if I just had that solar oven, so I could bake "the guys", Mango muffins!!!! Mango muffins w/ Coke?

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