13 traditional foods you need to eat in Costa Rica

Eating, like traveling, is a way to relate with the world and with new cultures. That's why when I travel, I make the local cuisine a big part of my adventure. That joy you feel when you taste something so different and so surprising for the first time. When you learn a new word for a new fruit you've never seen nor heard of before. When you taste a home-cooked meal in a foreign country and it's totally not what you were expecting. When you discover unknown fruits, exotic spices, new diets. It's an exploration-a way to experience a place and a mindset.

So, like every other aspect of my recent trip to Costa Rica, I learned not just the cute and weird phrases, the fun Spanish words or the fact that San José is hugely underrated. I also learned that the Costa Ricans have a serious sweet tooth, that coffee is a vital part of the local cuisine, and that even as sweet as the Ticos might be, they still like their fruits sour.