| January 2005
It started
as an after thought. After all, we were on our way home from visiting our
future home site in Las Brisas del Frances, Boquete, to the town of Atalaya
in the Province of Veraguas and still had several hours of driving time
ahead of us.
Having had
a killer thirst earlier, I had made the mistake of drinking not one but
two, ice cold Pipas (coconut juice) from a roadside vendor just 20 minutes
earlier and now Mother Nature was calling in the most urgent way.
As we reached the turnoff to Playa Las Lajas my prayers were answered.
A gas station, Potty Break!
I quickly pulled
over and ran headlong into the restroom door as my wife (Tina) and family
laughed hysterically. It was locked. I frantically asked the attendant
if I could use his facility to which he smiled and said, “Sure, that
will be 25 cents please.” I quickly thrust my hands into my pockets
looking for change. Not finding any, I pulled out a dollar bill from my
wallet and put it on the counter while simultaneously grabbing |
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| the key. As
the attendant started to protest my hurried departure I gave him a parting
sideways glance and told him I’d be back for the change and to return his
key. I think I heard him say to himself, “Gringos, always in such a
hurry”.
Having taken
care of business and feeling a lot more relaxed, the sign at the roadside
intersection pointing to Playa Las Lajas caught my eye. I gestured to Tina
non-verbally by using our cues of facial expressions consisting of nodding
my head forward and pursing my lips (pointing) while gazing towards the
sign and thereby asking her, do you want to go? The kids couldn’t see my
face and so didn’t know I was suggesting a beach detour. A good thing in
case the wife vetoed the idea. She shrugged noncommittally as if to say
“Sure, you’re driving”. As is almost always the case with our excursions,
another detour off the beaten path.
The road to
the beach was a little bumpy as I wasn’t able to navigate the truck around
all the potholes or the over filled ‘fixed’ potholes in the road.
Sometimes I just had to decide which would produce the lesser groan from
the shock absorbers and tires as well as my kidneys. |
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| Not that I’m
complaining, asphalt is good even when it’s a little bumpy. The majority
of the road way was in good repair so we got there quickly.
After having
passed through the small village of Las Lajas we were soon driving past
fruit laden trees that lined both sides of the road and formed the fence
line of the pastures and farms along the way. I asked Tina what kind of
fruit trees they were. She told me they were ‘Marañónes’
to which I responded with a blank stare. She said it again and looked at
me like I was crazy. Didn’t I know what Marañónes were? Then
she said, “You know ‘pepitas secas’. Now you need to understand, when my
wife says ‘pepitas secas’ the only thing I’ve found it means is ‘dried
nuts’. OK, dried nuts, what kind of nuts? We have these discussions all
the time. Spanish is my second language and unfortunately for us English
is her second language so we find ourselves at a loss for the ‘proper’ |
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| word a lot.
After a five
minute dissertation on what kind of dried nut she is talking about and
my still not having a clue she finally says, ‘You know…the roasted nuts
you like to buy from the roadside venders’. Oooohhh, I say, Cashews!
Right, Cashews. Wow, I’ve never seen a cashew tree before. What the heck
is that bell pepper shaped fruit all about I ask. She tells me its part
of the cashew, well not really, but the cashew nut (seed) grows underneath
it on the outside of the fruit itself. Then she asks me if I remember the
‘chicha’ (natural fruit drink) I drank in Boquete earlier in the
day. Of course I reply. Then she gives me the pursed lips look and the
bells start ringing in my head. Yes, of course, the drink I had…Chicha
de Marañón.
We continue
on to the beach and are there in a few minutes. We hadn’t planned on going
to the beach when we started on this outing so consequently no one had
swim suits or towels. Even though the beach was beautiful, after a couple
of minutes of kicking sand around and walking a few hundred yards we got
bored with the place. It was, after all, the middle of the week and
there was no one else around but by the looks of all the |
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| palapas lining
the beach and bar/disco setup nearby this looks like a pretty lively place
during the weekends and holidays.
We all piled
back into the truck and start heading back to the main road. When we reached
the Marañónes again I ask the kids if they want to pick some
to take home. Everyone says yes in unison. It seems there are hundreds
if not thousands of the cashew seeds on the ground. About half are seeds
only as birds and other critters have eaten the fruit or the sun and time
has devoured it to nothing. We start to collect only the seeds, as my wife
tells me she isn’t in the mood to make more chicha. She warns me not to
get the juice from the fruit on my clothes as I pull the fruit and seeds
apart as they will permanently stain my clothes.
We lost our
minds collecting the seeds. Before long we had collected approximately
two 10-kilo sacks worth of cashews. |
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| Whew…what
a workout. Bending down to pick up handfuls of cashew seeds and moving
on to more soon had us all perspiring up a storm. We used bottled water
to wash our hands of the cashew fruit’s juice and were soon on our way.
Throughout all this, it still hadn’t occurred to me to ask how or what
we were going to do with all these seeds. My wife knew, but she wasn’t
talking. When I finally did ask she would only say, “You’ll see”.
We arrived
in Atalaya about an hour before nightfall. After getting the seeds into
the backyard my wife asked our daughter Jenifer to go next door to her
grandmother’s house and ask to borrow ‘la paila’. Jenifer soon returned
with ‘la paila’. It turns out ‘la paila’ was an old beat up and
blackened Ford hubcap. I asked what we were going to do with a hubcap.
As an answer, Tina asked me to go to the orange tree and cut two long 1-inch
thick branches off of it. Then she thrust the machete in my hands and sent
me on my way all the while telling me to quit asking so many questions
as we had work to do and were losing the light of day.
While I
was massacring the orange tree, Tina started a fire with wood from
the backyard. She had set up an area away from all the outbuildings with
rocks to form an outdoor hearth and put some discarded rebar over the fire
to form a grate. Then she placed the hubcap on the rebar over the fire.
Once the hubcap started to smoke she filled it halfway with some of the
cashew seeds we had collected.
Pretty soon
with the intensity of the fire the cashew shells were smoking and sputtering
oil. Tina gave me one of the branches I had chopped and cleaned up and
told me to mix the cashews around in the hubcap. While I’m mixing, the
cashews are spitting and sputtering in the hot oil. I asked Tina how she
knows when the cashews are cooked and ready. Again, she tells me to be
patient and that I’ll see. When the cashews are nice and hot, Tina puts
her branch end in the fire and ignites it. Then she touches the flame on
the branch to the cashews. The oil on the outer shells ignites and now
one heck of blaze is going. I’m looking around for a fire extinguisher,
which we don’t have handy. Tina tells me to calm down and continue swirling
the nuts in the hubcap. When the outer shells are thoroughly blackened
Tina takes her branch, reaches underneath the hubcap and flings it up and
away from us as the nuts go sailing through the air.
Fire goes everywhere.
Quick! She commands me to douse the nuts with dirt/water and turn the fire
out. Then we go about collecting all the still hot cashew shells
and put them into a bowl where we let them cool off. I look at Tina and
ask her if we have any nutcrackers in the house. She says, “Maybe, but
there are plenty outside”. She smiles and points at some medium
sized rocks. I tell her she’s crazy and go look for the nutcracker.
By the time
I get back she has already started lightly pounding the cashew shells with
a rock against a cinder block. She is shelling three nuts to my one. I
gave up on the nutcracker and grabbed a rock. Hey, don’t laugh! It actually
was quicker and I was able to pull the nut out whole.
When we were
done, we cleaned up and went out on the veranda and lay in the two-person
hammock while we munched on still warm, freshly roasted cashews. As we
were enjoying the pepitas secas, I asked about the rest of our horde of
cashews. Tina smiled, and says, “We are going to roast them later and make
a ‘dulce’ (Panamanian fruitcake) like my grandmother used to make.
We talked about the how to’s of this fruitcake as we continued to eat the
pepitas but that story is for another time.
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Ernesto Click Here |
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