Cinnamon

I suppose people who become tour guides are more likely to be socially outgoing than others, but so far the Costa Ricans we’ve had occasion to spend time with have been optimistic and cheerful and funny. Our guide today was an American expat named Henry, who was nice, and kind of arrogant, and paranoid.

Henry owns a vanilla and spice plantation. He had hidden information on every topic, and every topic ended with a conspiracy. Obviously, the FDA only wants to kill Americans, science has no explanation for clairvoyance, and the ground cinnamon in America will kill you slowly.

But he was an interesting guy, and generally pleasant enough to hang around, and I learned some things. Cinnamon, for example, is really just the inner bark of a tree, whose leaves smell delicious. Sri Lanka’s cinnamon was once a preciously guarded secret, controlled by the Portuguese for over 100 years. It was based in a city called Ceylon, which lent its name to a variety of cinnamon that now accounts for about 40% of cinnamon in the world. (Not the kind we use in America, though.)