One of the things I was most excited to experience in my study abroad was the food. Costa Rica is famous for amazing fruits and homemade meals, and I couldn’t wait to try them. As soon as we left San Jose, I got to experience an amazing variety of foods along with some Costa Rican staple foods. One thing everyone quickly learned is that rice and beans are a necessity for almost every meal, including breakfast. They were always fantastic, but it really is amazing how often they could eat rice and beans. I can barely stand eating the same meal three times in a span of a couple of days, yet they had it for almost every meal with no qualms. One thing that was always changing was the juices and fruits available, although there were a couple of staples. Pineapples and guava were common, but sometimes there would also be bananas and watermelons. No matter which fruit they were serving, it was simply amazing. It was so much sweeter and softer than any of the fruits I’ve had at home and I could’ve just eaten the fruit for a majority of my meals and been entirely happy. They took this fruit and created some amazing types of juice with it. I am pretty picky at home and tend to stick to orange juice or apple juice without much expansion, but in Costa Rica I quickly became excited to try all the different types of freshly made juice. My favorite was the pineapple, mango and blackberry juices that I tried, which were beyond amazing. Finally, I really got to enjoy some of the meat and fish dishes in Costa Rica. My experience at one restaurant, in particular, stood out, as they actually caught the fish fresh just before our arrival and then served us a whole fish. It was a little weird to see a whole fish on my plate, but once I tried it, it was simply delicious. I really enjoyed broadening my horizons about food on this trip. It was yet another cool experience for me to enjoy.
