Goodbye Costa Rica: Mosquitoes & Mozote in Escazú…

In our last week in Costa Rica not a huge amount happened, yet it didn’t feel right to miss it out entirely. From the condominium in San Rafael we made our way back to Escazú. A month or so beforehand we had visited Escazú to go to the feria when we were staying in San Rafael de Escazú – yes, place names in Costa Rica are confusing as they are frequently repeated!

Just before we left San Rafael I had found details of a feria online which really appealed to us – la feria verde. It was just a 20 minute ride from where we were staying and was advertised for Saturday morning with lots of great organic produce and even live music. Saturday morning we called an uber and set off for the feria. We arrived and looking around saw a building that seemed to be the one I had seen in the photos online but there was nothing happening in there. Carrying on along the road we saw the feria down a side street but it was much smaller than we had expected. There was also no sign of live music or any of the other things advertised. Something didn’t seem right. We went into the nearby park and I checked again the details that I had found online. So now I found the mistake that I had made – I had actually trusted what I’d found on Google Maps. Often these days I hear the phrase ‘the map is not the territory’ and here I had a real world example of the truth of that statement! Looking over the links again I checked what I’d found before. Sure enough there was a marker for where we were standing which said ‘feria verde’. The opening hours matched too – Saturday morning. Clicking the link to their website it took me to facebook page which I’d seen previously advertising all the great stuff that had drawn us there. This time however I clicked another link from there which showed me the location – on the complete opposite side of San Jose! Why they had chosen (or mistakenly) entered the location so wildly incorrectly we’ll never know but we were quite disappointed!

We decided to make the best of our bad situation, buy some produce and head back home. The selection was alright but having become increasingly aware of the pesticide issues in Costa Rican agriculture we had really wanted to buy and eat something from a good source. However, there was a silver lining. At the very first feria we ever went to we’d tried a drink called mozote and after that point we had searched without success to buy the raw ingredients. Finally, here at the wrong feria, we found someone who was selling the little sticks used to make the drink.

My research had then told me that this drink was made from the stems of a plant which is in the mallow family (Malvaceae). This had caught my interest as common mallow (Malva sylvestris) was a plant which we used to harvest in England but had never found much of a mainstream use for it. In the early days of researching wild plants we’d discovered that mallow is extremely high in protein – around 13g per 100g. This high protein content makes the plant mucilaginous and this was clearly apparent in the drink mozote which had a thick gloopiness about it. Interestingly, the drink is said to be very good for you digestive tract, presumably because this thick protein-rich liquid helps to line the intestines. Since finding out all of this wonderful information we’d been eager to have a go at making some ourselves.

For almost the last time we packed up and made our way to our final stay. This last stop was a little self-contained place in a large property in Escazú. It ended up being a stay of mixed results. The house was within some very beautiful gardens and the lady who owned the property was very kind and welcoming. It had the added benefit of three dogs living on site which Rosa had been very excited about! On the downside, the house was once again lacking in resources in the kitchen. There were two other issues that made the stay here a bit less pleasant. First was that the birds were incredibly noisy. It seems a real privilege to be able to complain about the noise of so many birds and we fully recognise that, but the birds in this particular stay began their calls at around 4am and continued throughout the early morning! So with everyone waking up well ahead of schedule we began (and continued to be) very tired. The second issue was mosquitoes. The first night that we’d arrived had been the first significant downpour to mark the beginning of the rainy season. In addition to the noise of the birds the roof was very thin so this added to the disruption of that first night. The rain brought the mosquitoes out. Lots of mosquitoes. The real problem was that Rosa turned out to be very popular with them and also reacted badly to their bites. She was extremely upset and the rest of our stay really revolved around trying to find strategies to minimise the number of bites and alleviate the pain caused by them.

During our stay in Escazú we finally got the chance to make our mozote! We left it soaking overnight and the following day we had a nice big jug of thick gloopy liquid. Perhaps the best result from this was that Zia was surprisingly keen on our creation and she ended up drinking the vast majority of it.

Coincidentally, at around the same time we had got into drinking a herbal tea which we’d picked up from a local shop. My interest had been caught by the name of it – colite – and it also turned out to contain mallow as one of the ingredients. Funny to find in another part of the world so many uses for plants which I had worked with for years without finding much use for them.

When we weren’t despatching mosquitoes or dealing with bites we would head down to the local square which had a good set of play equipment and was a popular community hangout. We had also found another good organic food store. Just like when we were in Nuevo Arenal we stocked up on all kinds of tasty treats. It was a shame that this stop had come so late in our journey when we were at the point of running down our store of ingredients as they also ran a kind of box scheme where you could order your produce and then collect it from the store. It’s heartening to see these seeds of good supply chains taking root in places but they are still a tiny scattering compared to the large supermarkets which dominate even in a small sleepy place like Escazú.

We were ultimately glad to leave this stay. It was unfortunate that the rainy season had brought with it the beginning of the mosquito season which had cast a cloud over what would have been a really enjoyable stop under normal conditions. From here we had just two more nights staying in an apartment near Alajuela so that we were a mere 5 minutes from the airport and off to Colombia!