Tag Archives: Holidays in Puerto Rico

Celebrating the New Year in Maricao, PR

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This year we rang in the new year in a small agricultural town in Puerto Rico called Maricao. Maricao is mostly known for its coffee production, cooler temperatures (about 10-15 degrees cooler than lowlands) and slower pace of life.

Waking up
View from the mountains of Maricao where we stayed

However, while it is considered a very rural community, they are well-known for their New Year’s Eve celebration. The mayor’s office hires a live band, has a fireworks show and used to even have a pig roast in years past. Rincón doesn’t even do this and it is about 2-3 times the population (about 15,000 people) as Maricao (around 6,000). We thought it sounded like a great time when our new friends invited us to come to the fiesta and then stay the night at their 100-acre finca. And indeed it was.

Band in Maricao

We had a lot of fun dancing to the merengue and salsa music, eating a great meal and ringing in the New Year 3 hours earlier than we did last year.

Fireworks

Our gracious hosts then showed us around the farm in the morning and we admired all the beautiful tropical plants. We also noticed that while Maricao is only about 20 miles away as the crow flies from Rincón, it is actually quite a bit different when it comes to vegetation because of the climate differences. It really was quite a bit colder than in Rincón. Britton and I both had to snuggle under two quilts to stay warm! Maybe we are just getting acclimated, but it was the first time in Puerto Rico that we were a bit chilled.

Heliconia
Beautiful plants like this heliconia

It was also our first night away from our property in Rincón and it was fun to get away for a night. Seeing what a mature finca with 10+ year’s worth of growth looks like also reinvigorated all our efforts around the property. Plus thanks to our hosts, We went home with more starts to plant. What a great start to 2014. We hope you all have a Prospero Año Nuevo con mucha felicidad.

Gracias por visitar a Maricao

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A Happy Friendsgiving and After

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Just as we predicted at last year’s Thanksgiving, our first Thanksgiving in Puerto Rico was quite different from Thanksgivings in Colorado.

We were invited by some friends to a “Friendsgiving” which is essentially Thanksgiving with friends rather than family (thanks to our friends Naomi and Sage of Rincón Beer Company, you rock!). And since most of us at the gathering have virtually no family around, it was the perfect idea. As a potluck, each of us brought a dish and two people made turkey.

Friendsgiving

Because people come to Rincón from all over (Puerto Rico and the world!), they also bring their geographic and culinary experiences. Plus we had a few chefs who made some awesome dishes and I got to try coquito for the first time! Coquito is basically egg nog but made with coconut cream.

Some people told us that Thanksgiving is not very celebrated in Puerto Rico, but in our neighborhood, there was a pretty big party going on. The day before there were bands in the streets and the grocery stores were pretty full.

Friday we went to our friend Miri’s house/studio where she was having an after Thanksgiving sale on her handmade pottery and picked up a few items. Then we stopped by a little nursery and talked with a nice and knowledgeable woman most people call “Mother” about her plants.

Jardin de Mother

We noticed that in the middle of the small “vivero” or nursery she was growing a carambola (starfruit) tree and it was just covered in starfruit. We commented to her that they looked ripe and she said they indeed were but that she just didn’t really care for starfruit and that they often go to waste (que se pierde). She encouraged us to take as many as we wanted for free! We are consistently impressed by the generosity of people here.

Rincon Pottery Bowl
Our new pottery with some of our gifted starfruit and homegrown passionfruit (parcha)

She talked with Britton in Spanish and to his astonishment he answered her in a complete Spanish sentence! He said he felt surprised to hear it just come out of him. Something is sinking in!

We bought a few more plants from her (yes, more plants) and now we have to plant all of those as well as all the other ones we bought from our second expedition to Cabo Rojo’s Jardines Eneida.

Plants from Jardin de Mother

We enjoyed the rest of Friday at home drinking freshly made starfruit juice and working in the garden on a perfect 80 degree November day.

Starfruit juice

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. We missed our families this year but we had a chance to talk with them and it sounds like everyone is doing well. We really have so much to be thankful for.

 

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