¿Vas a poner la maría?

If you missed my first two posts about my Costa Rica adventures, you can read them here:

1.  Tienes que cancelar la entrada
2.  ¡Pura Vida!

Let's see if I can wrap things up in this post.  So far I covered the language and now it's time to talk about my second favorite thing, comida.

When I travel the first thing I usually want to do when I get off the plane is find someone to talk to in a local bar and have a beer.  So let's start with what's probably the most popular beer in Costa Rica:

I'm not huge on beer, it's more of something I do on vacation.  But I have to admit, it wasn't bad. Although I preferred the Imperial Silver:

You can probably tell those are photos I got off the internet.  As many of those things as I drank you'd think I would have taken my own photos.  Oh well.

Costa Rica is famous for it's casados.  A casado is what I'm going to call a combination plate for lack of a better word.  You get some type of meat and a couple of sides.  Here's one I tried:

As you can see I ordered pescado (fish).  And to be specific, it was Corvina (Sea bass).  The other items on the plate are arroz, frijoles, plátano maduro, ensalada and a limón madarin.  I have to to admit, it was ¡muy rico!

By the way, muy rico literally translates to "very rich" but when it comes to food that's a very common way to say it's "really good".

¿Cómo está la comida?
Está muy rica

How's the food?
It's really good

Even the fast food chains serve casados.

Costa Rica is also very famous for it's Gallo Pinto.  Gallo Pinto is a traditional Costa Rican breakfast food.  Here's a photo of what a breakfast of Gallo Pinto might look like.

I'm ashamed to say I never tried the Gallo Pinto.  Oh well, that's my excuse for another trip to Costa Rica.  I did however, try a lomito.

Lomito isn't exclusively Costa Rican, nor is it anything particularly Spanish.  It's the word the waitress told me they use for steak in Costa Rica.

There are a lot of good places to eat in Costa Rica, you can find lots of little restaurants walking up and down the street.  And these little restaurants are called Sodas.

 All this talk of food is making me hungry.  It's time to change subjects.

The last thing I'm going to talk about is taxi's.  The streets of San Jose are flooded with these little red cabs.

The meter is called a taxímetro.

Por favor, ponga el taxímetro
Please turn on the meter

You may need that phrase may often than you think.  It will keep the taxi driver honest.  And speaking of honest cab drivers, there are people that moonlight as cab drivers that don't have a taxímetro.  These so-called cabs are called piratas and aside from the fact they aren't necessarily safe, you're going to end up paying more.

The taxímetro is also called La María.

¿Vas a poner la maría?
Are you going to turn on the meter?

And that's it, we're done!  At least for today.  There's one more thing I want to share with you but it will have to wait for my next post.

Oh, before I go, you may remember I mentioned plátanos maduros earlier.  If you don't what those are, then read my below posts.  And if even you do know what they are, you still probably want to read these posts because you might just be surprised at what you learn.

1. ¿Tostones o amarillos?
2. Banano-Banana-Guineo-Plátano


¡Hasta la próxima!