Page 5 - LIMON TOURIST GUIDE

Introduction
It includes the well-known rice and beans made from rice, beans and coconut milk and seasoned with thyme, onion and celery. The meal is served with fried fish or chicken smothered in a flavorful sauce, plus a few slices of ripe plantain.
Pan bon, a cousin of Jamaican spice bread, is prepared with flour, panela, butter, dried fruits, vanilla and star anise.
The famous patí (patty), a pastry filled with ground beef and spiced with scotch bonnet chilies, is not to be missed. Other local specialties include ginger snaps and rondón, a soup containing vegetables and seafood.
Chinese and Indians
Just as striking as Limón’s Afrodescendants are a different ethnic group who appeared on the scene at the time of the construction of the railroad, namely the region’s Asian population. The group claims both Chinese and Indian roots.
The Chinese group has a cultural wealth spanning millennia, but has remained in self-isolation, where the main barriers have been linguistic (they speak little Spanish), religious and ideological, and they have little contact with the rest of the population.
This population has prospered in commercial activities, especially in the field of supermarkets, but it is in the restaurant business that they have opened a small window into part of their culinary culture. And perhaps the biggest such opening for this group is the Chinese Culture Day Celebration (October 5), hosted by the Chinese Association of Limón.
Apart from the Chinese, there is another ethnic group established in the territory, specifically in the community of Wesfalia (Limón). This was a small group from India, who are known as “culí” (although this term applied to people from various South Asian countries). An anthropological study revealed that this ethnic group is close to disappearing due to miscegenation.
Language
Limón’s magic also extends to its language, with Spanish spoken along an English patois, which borrows some grammatical structures from Spanish alongside words from indigenous languages.
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