San Jose - a tatty old capital city

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After nearly four hours on a bus, we tried to get a taxi to our hotel. The drivers were asking about four times what it was going to cost on Uber so that's what we did. Our driver was quite chatty once he found out that we spoke Spanish. He bemoaned the lack of investment in the city and called it feo - ugly. We thought tatty would have been a better adjective. For the final four nights of our trip we had chosen to stay somewhere a bit more comfortable - the Radisson Hotel San Jose.Comfortable it was, but it also highlighted what, to us, were the over-inflated prices for accommodation throughout this trip. It was a bit out of town and despite our opinion on the price, was much cheaper than similar establishments closer to the action meaning our many Uber trips around the city balanced things out.

When visiting the city there were essentially three parts that we explored. The east, the centre and the west! It wasn't really possible to go east or west without first doing the centre, so this post isn't precisely chronological! The central section all revolves around the Plaza de la Cultura where the National Theatre and the Pre-Colombian Gold Museum are located. We had a wonderful dramatised version of the theatre tour which was entertaining and informative. We'd highly recommend doing it in English too, as if we had done it in Spanish we think we would have missed some of the little jokes and anecdotes. Nearby is Central Park which is more of a concrete square than a park, but it does have some intriguing sculptures, including a road sweeper. There was a curious collection of older people immortalised outside the national bank, and at the very western side of the centre a big fat lady prevented traffic entering the pedestrianised area. Chinatown is located just east of the centre and there we were amazed to find a statue of Russ's favourite Argentinian rock star, Gustavo Cerati. There were also lots of murals of all the disciplines of the arts with the cinema one being perhaps the most recognisable for most people.

However, our first venture out had seen us walk (ok in daylight hours) to the district of Amon and everything to the east of the city centre. It began with the incredible sculpture outside the fire station about ten minutes walk from the hotel. From there we walked through the city and its parks admiring the sculptures which seemed to be everywhere. A Spanish conquistador was a solitary figure on Plaza España. Argentina again featured when we discovered the godfather of tango music, Carlos Gardel, near the Yellow House which has housed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a century now. Curiously, there is a section of the Berlin Wall in its garden! Near the ultra-modern building housing the Jade Museum is the Plaza de la Democracia which also commemorates the abolition of the country's armed forces in 1949. The National Museum of Costa Rica is housed nearby in the old fortress and, although we didn't go inside, it's an interesting building and its history can be seen by the pockmarks in its towers caused by shelling and gunfire. A huge metallic sphere stands right outside its main entrance. In the streets nearby in almost every direction we found an amazing collection of murals to everyone's taste from football to history through politics and surrealism!

The west side of the city is dominated by La Sabana Park. We had expected this to be a leafy suburb with upper class neighbourhoods. True, it was slightly less tatty than other parts of the city, but its chance to impress was severely hampered by the draining of its huge lake which did nothing for its aesthetics. The Museum of Costa Rican Art is, however, well worth your time and effort of getting there. The park used to be an airport and the museum is housed in the former terminal and air traffic control tower. Whilst many of the exhibits were beyond our taste or comprehension, the so-called "Gold Room" was magnificent with a full 360 degree diorama of Costa Rica's history from the conquistadors to the present day carved into wooden panels all around. For this alone it was worth a visit. At the far western end of the park is the National Stadium where we were lucky enough to watch a game of football.

That game of football was between Deportivo Saprissa, one of the nation's biggest teams, and Cartaginés from the eastern side of the city. The game was supposed to have been played in a northern suburb where Saprissa normally play their games (bizarrely quite some way from the suburb actually called Saprissa), but some crowd trouble in a previous game saw their stadium closed for a game. Rather than accept the punishment, the club simply moved the game to the National Stadium! That allowed us to see a game, at least. Sadly it wasn't a great game with Saprissa winning 1-0 thanks to a bit of a soft penalty, but it was great to witness such an event and to see the stadium close up.

So that was it for San Jose and for our trip to Central America. It was a long, long trip home. The hotel, despite taking four days of money from us, would not allow us an extra hour or so forcing us to check out at midday. A super-friendly Uber driver took us to the airport where we paid $28 each for a lounge pass. That was money very well spent and we boarded our flight feeling quite relaxed. 24 hours later we felt rather less relaxed as we got home, and it has taken a good week to recover from the jetlag caused by a seven hour time difference!!

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Costa Rica
Looks like your trip was well planned and an upscale hotel at the end doesn't hurt although we prefer to be in the center of town for walking. You've seen a lot on this trip. Thanks for taking us along.