Blogs from San José, San José, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 33

The town of San Joaquín de Flores, where we live, is in the province of Heredia, but it is also more or less a suburb of the capital city of San José. On Thursday afternoon, we spent a few hours on a tour of the city. First we drove through some of the more affluent neighborhoods and saw the home of the current president, Oscar Arias, as well as the US Embassy. Then we drove into the heart of the city and had lunch at a typical restaurant near the National Museum. Our food was served on a wooden plank lined with banana leaves, and we had our choice of type of "casado," which is the very traditional and VERY common dish of beans and rice and either beef, chicken or fish, usually served with a ... read more

Hello everyone! I had a long day yesterday getting to Costa Rica since I had to get up at 2 am in Brooksville. I arrived after 3 pm Florida time. I decided to take all my bags to the hotel where I will meet the other USF people on Sunday and leave the largest there and take my backpack on the next leg of my journey. It is a quaint little hotel with lots of small gardens through it. The breakfast area looks like a nice little park. And the breakfast was wonderfully tasty and healthy. I had gallo pinto and eggs, fruit, some very strong coffee (half a cup) and some tea. I am glad that I get to come back here on Sunday. The showers were not the suicide showers that I had to ... read more

We landed in San Jose around 2pm and rented a Montero Sport with Dollar Rental. The road were fairly easy to navigate through with heavy traffice. When we arrived in the city of San Jose, we quickly realized that there were no street signs anywhere and our GPS system was traveling faster than us. We tried our hardest to keep up but fell about 15 blocks or so behind our guide. To make a long story short, we resorted to using just a street map that was attached to one of my guide books in order to find our way around. The costa ricans do not have addresses: they use landmarks.... It took us roughly 4 hours to get from the Juan Santamaria airport to the Bekuo Hostel in the San Pedro neighborhood of San Jose. ... read more

Jenna and I will be traveling to Costa Rica in just 3 days! This was a last minute, spur of the moment trip. Either of us had any intentions on going, but when the airfare went down as low as it did, we decided to buy... and so we're off! My understanding is that it might not be possible to load pictures while I'm out there. I will definitely do it when I come back if that's the case. I will do my best to blog every other day if possible. I'm not sure what it will be like since, hopefully, we'll be out in the jungle ;)... read more

Junior and I walked around San José, Costa Rica this past Saturday. Our travels took us to; Parque Zoológico Simón Bolivar (the San Jose Zoo), Museo de Oro Y Numismática (the Pre-Columbian Gold and Numismatic or Money Museum), Museo Nacional (the National Museum) in the old Costa Rica army fort known as the Bellavista Headquarters. We were also fortunate enough to view the limited time showing of Cow Parade which features themed cows created by local artists that have been placed all over the downtown San Jose area. This is the same International organization that brought Cow Parade to my former home of Chicago several years ago. One nice thing about San José, Costa Rica is its size. All points of interest are within walking distance or a $2.00 cab ride. Weekend days are best for ... read more