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To welcome in the holiday season, also considered the season of tamales by most Costa Ricans, the Hipermas supermarket in San Sebastián will be making a giant Tamale or "tamalón" that can feed 2,000 people.

The construction of the tamale began today and will be unveiled on Sunday at 3pm during an event at the San Sebastian Hipermas that will include Christmas music. The Wal-Mart owned supermarket chain Hipermas is also the official sponsor of the event.

The tamale is being constructed by Arley Navarro, a tamale maker from the region with the assistance of about 20 people. The Corporate Manager of Wal-Mart told the daily newspaper Al Dia that at the moment they are not sure how they will accomplish the culinary feat, or how big the pot to cook it in will be.

The tamale will be 2 meters long and 1.5 meters wide and will have to be transported in separate pieces. Because this is the first time any such attempt has been made to construct a giant tamale in Costa Rica, they are not sure how much the final product will weigh.

The ingredients will include 100 kilos of banana leaves, 40 kilos of dough, 25 kilos of meat, 30 kilos of potatoes, 25 kilos of rice, 25 kilos of peas, 5 kilos of salt, 60 chiles, 3 kilos of garlic, 30 kilos of carrots, 30 bunches of cilantro, 35 kilos of garbanzo beans, 15 kilos of olives and 200 meters of string to tie it up.

The average tamale is about 5" x 4" and is made with a corn dough that is often filled with a mixture of chicken or pork, carrots and potatoes and wrapped in a banana leaf and tied off with string to be boiled.