We arrived in Bahia Ballena after a lengthy lull in internet activity and I have a number of back-logged posts.

Anyway, we took two overnight trips to get from Playa Tamarindo to the inside of the Nicoya peninsula. The first stretch to Bahia Samara was exceedingly irritating as we were beating up into the wind into a medium-sized swell, with steep wind-chop and a current against us. Night found us dodging rain clouds (a losing battle as there were too many to avoid) and tacking all over the place. Come morning, I swear we were still within eyesight of where we had been the night before when the sun went down. It took us 24 hours to go only around 50 miles and we had reasonable wind the entire time. We were pretty skeptical as to the quality of the anchorages of either Samara or the more popular Carillo because we had a south-southwest swell and wind direction, but we decided to nose into Samara and check things out; if too bouncy, we’d just head on. At low tide, Samara was fine and we stayed the night. Town was cute and packed with German tourists (easily spotted on the beach in their speedos).

As the tide rose and the swell washed over the reefs, the anchorage got bouncy and by the next afternoon, we were feeling very much ready to head on. We left at 4pm in order to time our landing in Bahia Ballena during the morning and set out right into a major rain squall, which happily had the effect of flattening the sea out a little and making the ride easier. The wind was again coming right from where we wanted to go and we again tacked back and forth. Naturally, each tack felt like we would make better directional progress on the other tack and so there was much activity during my watch switching sides, back and forth. Finally the wind died and we bobbled around until I couldn’t stand it anymore and started the outboard.

We arrived as planned in the morning to a large, well-protected bay; on the southern side is a small pier where they unload fish daily (so far the catch has been dorado) and two small villages. Across the bay is another small village and on the north side, a small white beach with a wrecked sailboat lying under the palms. We spent the first night over by the pier and then moved over to check out the wrecked boat.

As we neared the beach, we realized that the wrecked boat was a Jim Brown—possibly a 37 or 40-footer—and with one ama completely torn off, it was in pretty bad shape.

The boat was a total mess with ants crawling all over it and wasp nests dangling from the cabin ceilings. We found molding charts from all over the world and soggy publications dating from the late 70’s, addressed to someone in the Physics Department of University of Oregon. We chatted a bit with a local guy on the beach and he said the boat belonged to a guy named ‘Heart’ who lived just up the hill above the beach.

The name ‘Heart’ rang a bell; Joshua’s dad once told a story about when he was building his Brown 40 in Gold Beach during the late 70s. One day a guy appeared in the doorway of the boat shed; he had long wild hair and a scraggly beard and was dressed in oilskins. Joshua’s dad said he looked like some kind of mountain man. The man introduced himself as Heart and had come by because he was also building a Brown 40. He had a bit of land and he started a commune on it; anyone who wanted could come and live there for free, they just had to help him build his boat. Heart had said he was an inventor, made inverters. The next day we went up to the house and discovered that this Heart was indeed the same man, with long white-blond curly hair and a beard. And he remembered Joshua’s dad and his boat in Gold Beach.

We found Heart in his office, surrounded by computers and parts and wires and piles of taken-apart inverters. “Oh hey! Let me just get some pants on here!” He told us that they built the boat on a commune near some tiny town in southern Oregon. They constructed it in three pieces since they were considerably inland—the center hull and the two amas—then when they were ready, they rolled them down the hill on logs from their property to a truck where they were moved to the Umpqua River. He then spliced the main strength bulkheads together making the boat one single piece and launched it into the Umpqua. Upon completion, they floated the boat down to the sea and set out around the world with three families aboard. Aboard were he and his wife and their four kids, another family who was pregnant and had a small child, and a third family with a breastfeeding baby. After a few years, they made it as far as Panama and decided to stop for a while in Costa Rica. And he’s been here with his family (nine kids in all) ever since. The boat was broken apart in a storm three years ago and he says he has plans to fix it back up but, “you just get to doing different things, you know.”

He runs Heart Industries (or whatever it’s called) out of Costa Rica, does R&D from his home on Bahia Ballena and he says they have a factory near San Jose. “What kind of inverter you have there on that boat of yours?” he wanted to know. We also met his wife, Honey, and his 17-year old son; their daughter Eden owns the Ballena Bay Yacht Club bar and restaurant across the bay. Honey is responsible for organizing the organic produce market held in the yacht club every Saturday, which sounded absolutely awesome—she went on about the beautiful herbs and vegetables and whole grain fresh breads and goat milk yogurts and homemade cheeses they always have. Oh man, I was decidedly bummed to have missed it.

We left the Heart home and wandered back down the beach to where our kayak was waiting underneath the remaining wing of the rotting tri. It seems odd and sort of sad to see it there and think about how much life went into that boat, both in building it and living and traveling on it. But maybe it isn’t, you just get to doing different things and Heart appears to be right where he wants to be, surrounded by his family with the Pleiades resting on the beach in front of his house.

We used to prepare this all the time when we lived on actual land. Recently, Joshua’s dad Jeff visited us on the boat and after a week of largely vegetarian dinners, a general demand for MEAT was announced by the boys. We made Joshua’s Pork Chop and, as always, it turned out pretty darned good. We never had a recipe specifying exact ingredients amounts and so we’ve always winged it—a thing that sometimes brings out the bickering on my and Joshua’s part. I have always had little regard for precision in ingredient specifications and Joshua thinks he actually remembers exactly how much of everything he put in it the last time we made it. Anyway, that’s what the wine is for.

Ingredients, more or less
* Pork! Chops of pork! I make Joshua pick these out due to an irritating squeamishness on my part around supermarket displays of dead flesh. He usually homes in on the thick ones.
* Dehydrated wild mushrooms (like porcinis); or if you are lucky enough to have fresh ones, use those. Rehydrate in hot water or broth (don’t throw out the mushroom juice when you are done though).
* White wine, maybe a half cup (sauvignon blanc, or a dry sherry—not cooking sherry either, use something you wouldn’t mind actually drinking, like a fino or amontillado. We also used Spanish brandy once). In fact, pour yourself and your cooking partner a glass in preparation for the preparation.
* Onion, chopped.
* Much garlic, sliced into little garlic sliceys.
* Balsamic vinegar (or champagne vinegar, a substance I find tastes like acetone—and not in a good way—but that Joshua loves for some crazy reason so you’ll have to battle it out on this one out). OH! I have just now received confirmation from Joshua that “Sherry vinegar’s the best.” Definitive; there you have it.
* Scant spoon of sugar, possibly. It depends upon how much balsamic you put in and how sweet it is (you can adjust for taste near the end). You might have to sneak this one in as I do for Joshua because the combination of Pork and Sugar scrambles his brain.
* Bay leaf.
* Possibly a squeeze of lime or lemon juice—again, taste it and make your decision.
* Salt and pepper to taste.

Get out your best big frying pan. Joshua is in charge of the browning of goods because he is King of the Pork Chop and so I usually just humor him on this one. Heat some oil in the pan (we always seem to use olive oil because we’re cooking Neanderthals but something that has a higher burn point is obviously preferable) and proceed to burn the shit out of all the garlic I just spent all day slicing into cute, uniform little sliceroos. Swear vociferously and demand to be handed a slotted spoon with which to fish out smoking garlic chars while I roll my eyes in I-told-you-so smugness. Luckily I always chop four extra cloves and so the process gets repeated but with a more careful eye. This time, fish out golden, crisp garlic chippy-chips from the hot oil and set aside in an attractive auxiliary kitchen dish.

Now for the pork. You must brown the pork chop; or rather sear it—a task that is nearly impossible using an alcohol stove such as we have on the Time Machine but was a SNAP when we had an antique electric stove that had only two settings: lava-red and dull brown on only one part of one spiral. Browning the pork chop, again, is Joshua Territory. I stand aside and peer around his shoulder while topping off my glass of wine. Once the browning of the pork chop is complete (be careful not to cook it all the way through, yet), set it aside for the time being.

Now, add onions to the frying pan, chopped finely and uniformly by Yours Truly and whose perfection is scoffed at by Joshua, who is simply jealous that he is incapable of such mastery of the large-bladed knife. Fight over who gets to stir. Take several sips of wine.

Once onions are well browned, a task that takes all night if you let Joshua stir because he somehow feels that the cooking process is hastened if all onions are pushed to the outskirts of the frying pan rather than spread uniformly across the center, add the mushrooms. I have to backtrack a little here: While Joshua was pushing the onions all over hell and gone in the pan, one must take a break and wind down, for example by chopping mushrooms. Remove the mushrooms from the reconstituting liquid and chop finely (I do this because the mushrooms I use are often the Trader Joes “wild” mushroom mixture and so I try to marry random mushroom flavors as best as I can). Add this to the onions in the pan and let Joshua do what he will with them while you spring into action. SPICES! Chuck in a bay leaf! Pour in the remaining mushroom juice! Grind in some pepper! Add a splash of balsamic vinegar and tell Joshua it was his favorite champagne vinegar that you threw out four months ago! Toss your own glass of wine in the pan! Sneak a taste of the sauce so far. Distract Joshua’s attention (“LOOK! A condor!!”) whilst adding a smidge of sugar to the mix if it tastes a bit off; seize control of the wooden spoon to mix this around. I believe I’ve been known to add a pinch of thyme to this as well.

More wine. For you.

Now, add the pork chops back to the pan and reduce the heat to simmer. I generally see to it that each chop is carefully covered with a blanket of mushroom/onion mixture and that they are neatly arranged in the pan to finish cooking. This generally doesn’t take too much longer (five minutes, maybe) and while they finish up, you may cover the pan or leave it uncovered in order to reduce the sauce to an appropriate amount. Taste and adjust salt/pepper as you like. Add a squeeze of lemon or lime juice if it isn’t as tangy as you might like.

When they are finished (Joshua cuts into one and when the center is just a teeny bit pink, calls the cooking process done), remove from heat and serve, spooning the mushroom/onion mixture over the top with the juice. Sprinkle the garlic chips on top of this creation. We generally make a salad to go along with this. A Caesar salad, perhaps, using actual lettuce. Ohhhh. Good stuff.

We bought this at one of the grocery stores in Liberia. I liked the symmetry of it and the shape of the stem and the lovely golden orange color. It is weirdly lightweight for the size.

Sliced open, it revealed a centimeter of pithy shell with an interior that can only be described as snot. Well, that’s not entirely fair; chunky snot.

You see that? It smells generally fruity in an unidentifiable way. We got up the nerve to taste it.

Glop on spoon. The snot-like interior is made up of many dark seeds glommed together with a gelatinous connective tissue, which is disturbingly difficult to separate into a spoon-sized bite. It reminds me of frog eggs, until you take a bite—not that I’ve tried a bite of frog eggs before.

And the taste is not unpleasant, sort of jasminey but with a little orange; neither flavor is particularly strong. The texture is something else: extraordinarily slimy and gooey but then the seed part is crunchy—exceedingly crunchy, like little dried beetles.

I’ve never tasted anything like it.

Time Machine checking in from the slowest internet connection on the planet. We had an annoying overnight upwind, upswell, upcurrent, upchop sail and were happy to drop our anchor in the lee of a rock here in Bahia Samara.

November 9th: ONE YEAR!! Wooo hoo!

No significant progress lately. We volunteered to boat-sit for Lotus after Jerry and Joni found they had to make an emergency US trip. So we’ve been just hanging out, getting over colds we picked up in Liberia and taking advantage of the extra floor space to lay out sewing projects. We should be heading on again after the 4th Nov.