The Musical Fruit

No radio show last night due to post-vacation exhaustion but I have returned to the land of posting. I was in Costa Rica for 5 days last week and hoped to have some music to comment on but instead I've got nothing. Not a single Costa Rican song or story to tell you about the music of the wonderful country. All week long, we were driven around the rolling hills and windy streets of La Fortuna and beyond and not once did our driver put on the radio. I had hoped to hear what Costa Rican radio would sound like. Would there be a lot of national flavor? Wall to wall classical guitar music? The greatest hits of the 80s, 90s and today? I still have no idea since we rode in silence and it was torture for someone like me who craves background noise because we rode a lot. Once, one of us piped up and asked for Heiner, our incredible friendly driver, to turn on the radio but this idea was silenced by the majority who wanted to be able to talk and listen to the sounds of the jungle, which admittedly were amazing. I woke up every morning to a unique symphony of sounds that involved some if not all of the following: Toucans, Scarlet Tanagers, Howler Monkeys, Cicadas, Finches, Goats, Farm Workers, Dogs, Cows and more. It was absolutely cacophonous and so overpowering, I never made it past 6 am before being woken up.
Since we had no music to fill our ears, my brain started recalling song at random to give me some free entertainment. It started slowly but by the end of the week, my head was buzzing with non stop hits including some really odd selections. This is the first song that decided to appear from the void I was living in.

I have no idea why that was my brain's debut but it wasn't unwelcome. I love discovering new pop hits to latch on to and this one is so wonderfully cheesy that I can't help but give in.

One of the special treats of being in Costa Rica was eating fresh fruit directly from Luna Nueva's farm. For each meal we had fresh pineapples, papayas and mangoes as big as small children picked from the grounds. It was heavenly. On Wednesday, we ventured into the rainforest and our guide Robert pointed out a Guanabana tree to us. The fruit is large and bumpy but the flesh is white and juicy. It's almost chewy like and oyster but incredibly delicious with a flavor unlike anything I've ever eaten. We passed around pieces, marveling at the taste of this strangely names fruit. The sun was shining down, the forest was chattering away around us and things were pretty perfect. Until someone decided to pipe up and sing, "Guanabana" to the tune of the insidious classic "Mahna Mahna." At that point it was all over. For the rest of our trip, we couldn't go more than a few hours before someone would call out "Guanabana!" and before you know it, we'd all chime in "Do-Dooooo-Do-Doo-Doo." Ahhhh, the sounds of the rainforest.