Early Dinner at Soda Las Palmeras, Costa Rica

Soda Las Palmeras is about 1.5km's outside of Montezuma on a gravel road beside a small, rocky cove on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. There's nothing else there, just a home in the jungle with a massive balcony and a few tables. In this area, small businesses have a couple of great ways of advertising themselves. One, is to use old satellite dishes, the other, is to use traditional old timber wagon wheels. Wagon wheels are beautifully decorated discs, brightly coloured and very ornamental. I suspect they had no idea that they were actually painting mandalas on those things, and finally, well they'd probably have told me that I can call them what I like!

Las Palmeras had one such wagon wheel out front, and it drew me in. I had a casado, a typical Tico meal with a little bit of everything, a salad, some fried platanos, some beans, rice, and a meat of your choice, which for me this time, was chiccarones, small lumps of roasted pork. With a pineapple shake. It was a beautifully presented and delicious meal, and super entertaining, with white-faced monkeys climbing all over the place and peering under the balcony roof!

With this drawing, I've tried to stay true to the general design of the wagon wheel, while incorporating the various elements of the meal to the different shapes...