For the Love of Tortillas – On The Camino Costa Rica

What possesses someone to go on? To rise up daily out of bed at 03:00 a.m. – it must be for the love of the tortillas, I thought.

To get up daily and to grind the corn fresh daily so that the love of your life can make her masa for the tortillas. It truly must be love.

My first thoughts of the day as I thank daily the start of a new day on the Camino de Costa Rica.

Today we enjoy a lovingly prepared breakfast and then it’s off to the butterfly farm before getting back on the Camino to conquer that first mountain before the oppressive heat and next thunderstorm.

So why go on? One of our hiking girls now has bone on bone knee pain that may have started long ago as a younger runner.

Yesterday could’ve been her zero day (rest day) but, she said she doesn’t want to miss the experience.

Is it for the love of the tortillas or the camino that we are now willing to risk pain, sleep or endure anything just to finish?

Tortillas first served as the basic food and energy source for sugar cane workers. The amount of love and care required to make just one tortilla is truly an art form perfected over a lifetime.

The desire to continue to endure the pain of walking and go on when others in less comfortable predicaments won’t is also now hard to imagine. Sort of like, if you haven’t been there before it would be hard now to explain.

Enjoy your day wherever you are and know there are many out there today enjoying great tortillas.

Pura Vida – Costa Rica

Ralph/Rafa/Rafael/Trawlercat