Costa Rica - San Jose - 2 to 6 October 2012

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Well here we are travelling again and feeling really excited about setting off to Costa Rica for three months. We do enjoy moving on again for new adventures - but miss our family and friends when we are travelling. Since our last blog in Australia, we travelled back to the UK after a brief stop visiting Geoff, Sharon and Maisie in Dubai. Paul had upgraded our flights with Emirates to ‘business class’ for both legs of our journey; from Brisbane to Dubai and Dubai to London. Oh what a difference that made, we had door to door special treatment from the moment we left Brisbane, our arrival in Dubai and then onward to Heathrow all the way to Kerry and Cliff’s home in Winchester. The leg from Dubai to Heathrow was in an Airbus 380 and oh what a treat that was, massive amounts of space (I had three windows to myself) as well as a large self service bar at the rear of the cabin with everything you could want all included including a lovely selection of wines and gourmet foods - who could ask for more.





Well what a difference our flight to Costa Rica was, travelling in ‘economy’ as we could not ‘quite’ justify flying business class again so soon! Firstly the flight out of Heathrow was delayed due to the late arrival of cabin staff!!! - we therefore arrived late in Madrid for our connecting flight to Costa Rica. Even though it was a British Airways scheduled flight used by Iberia everything on board had to be bought - no free drinks of any sort not even coffee. On our arrival in Madrid a coach was provided for us to disembark from the rear of the plane for those travelling to the Americas which took us part of the way to the next terminal. We then had a mammoth run through the airport terminal arriving just as our connecting flight was finalizing boarding - so a huge sigh of relieve. On board the ten hour flight it was very cramped (why do these flights have reclining seats). It’s impossible to use the food tray when the seat in front is fully reclined. The food was poor, my meal was cold and I asked for it to be heated but it never did come back.......the Steward later apologised as he had forgot.......luckily I had some M&S chocolate cookies ........





The only good thing about the flight was the lovely views as we flew over the Bahamas, Cuba, Cayman Islands and Barbados and then crossed the coast into Costa Rica. Our first glimpse of the country emphasized its ‘greenness’ with long muddy rivers curving down to the sea through thickly forested valleys and coastline.





Costa Rica is home to a rich variety of plants and animals, many within the fertile central plateau with its rich cloud forest and tropical jungles. While the country is small and has only about 0.25%!o(MISSING)f the world's landmass, it contains 5%!o(MISSING)f the world's biodiversity. Around 25%!o(MISSING)f the country's land area is in protected national parks - the largest percentage of protected areas in the world. We are hoping to see many of these parks during our three month stay. Due to its geographical location, CR bridges the northern and southern most points of the two American continents. This makes it the meeting point of a variety of cultures and a density of plant and animal species said to be unlike any other country in the world, hence one of the reasons we have always wanted to visit. There are approximately 850 bird species, 600 of which are non-migratory. The other birds migrate during the North American winter, making a stop in CR before continuing on to South America. There are about 200 species each of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, with 34,000 species of insects and around 9000 plants.





Costa Rica is a peaceful country, without an army or military of any kind. Bordered by Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south and with the Pacific Ocean (length 640 miles) to the west, and the Caribbean Sea (length 132 miles) to the east. With only 153 miles between coasts it should be easy to get around but apparently the road conditions are not good even in the dry season and we are arriving in the middle of the rainy season - now referred to as the green season.





On arrival in this unique country we had a warm welcome from the weather (no rain) and also from a chap in immigration before proceeding to luggage collection. We were first to arrive but we waited and waited for our luggage to arrive on the carousel, until the last cases were off - ours had not made the flight and when we checked at ‘lost luggage’ we were told that they were still in Madrid. So it was not a very good start to our Central American adventure!!!! We were also pretty angry, as we had managed to catch the flight ‘running on foot’ and all Iberia had to do was move the luggage from one terminal to the next by luggage carrier..........





They promised that the luggage would be put on tomorrow's flight and we should get it the next evening. The lost luggage department gave us a bag of emergency supplies which including a pair of extra large PJs. My bag also included deodorant as well as paper pants but no toothbrush, whereas Paul’s included toothbrush and a shaver - at least he did not have to grow a beard and we could share toothbrushes.........so we will did survive.........





The shuttle bus to our accommodation was good and we soon arrived at the Cristina Suites in the capital city of San Jose. We had recently changed our apartment to a single due to our friends Jim and Sue not being able to join us due to illness. Jim was scheduled to have an operation in Eastbourne this week and we wish him a speedy recovery - we shall miss them both during our journey around CR but hopefully maybe able to catch up with them some day, somewhere in the world......... On arrival at our accommodation they had not changed the room and were given two en-suite rooms complete with kitchen and living area - a huge amount of space for just the two of us but we spread out even with just our hand luggage and decided to stay rather than change rooms. That evening we dined in a local restaurant before retiring to bed exhausted.





The next morning it was bright and sunny (still waiting for the rain) and we had breakfast sat by the poolside. It was a little strange as our fellow guests did not seem like tourist and it was only later chatting to the receptionist who said that many Americans came to CR for cosmetic dental treatment as it was so much cheaper than in the US - that’s why they kept dazzling us with their pearly white smiles.





Later we organised transport to our next destination in five days time (with the help of the friendly receptionist with her expert Spanish - Sue you would have been useful already!) before setting off armed with a walking map of the local area. San Jose is a difficult place to locate an addresses as there are no street signs and homes and buildings are not numbered. Google maps show street names in the San Jose metropolitan area but if you ask someone the way you will probably be told to take a left or right at a landmark that may not exist. This is a big headache for us tourists, not to mention the locals as apparently a quarter of their mail never arrives at its destination The few street names people do use are invented by the locals among them ‘Light Street’, because it was the first place in Costa Rica to have electricity! All this should soon change as the week we arrived the city has started putting up 22,000 streets signs, some on posts and some on the walls of buildings. The plan is to get Costa Ricans to start using the real street names that have existed for at least 20 years, but that no one knows. The project is expected to be completed in seven months and is a way to modernize the city and make it more attractive to us tourists, who more commonly visit the country's beaches and national parks rather than its capital city. A bit late for us but it should help fellow tourists in the future if it gets off the ground.





We did manage to find our way back to the apartment and later in the day we were delighted when our luggage arrived - it was great to be able to have a clean change of clothes as well as charge our computer and ipad which were getting low on power and are only means of communication.





Over the next few days we explored more of the local area, just a short walk away was the Parque Metropolitano La Sabana and we wandered around here quite often. The weather usually stayed sunny in the mornings and rain came in from the mountains in the afternoons. The park was dotted with strange artworks including a large whale bone structure near the lake. It houses many sporting facilities and includes the National Gymnasium, the newly completed National Stadium, and a number of tennis, basketball, and volleyball courts as well as many running and jogging tracks. At the weekend the park was popular with Tico families making use of the facilities, children riding ponies, boys playing footballs, people out jogging, families picnicking and dads and sons flying kites. Mounted police toured the park and everyone was happy and cheerful although we were told not to visit the park at night. Many colourful Rainbow Gum trees (not native) shaded the tracks and in the centre was a large artificial lake home to a variety of ducks who were joined at the weekend by the local children splashing around the edges.





It was nice to have a peaceful ‘green oasis’ so near to our apartment. It was luckily saved from urbanism being formerly the site of the San Jose's International Airport. Takeoffs and landings must have been a little bit harrowing though as the park was quite small! On the edge of the park was the Museo de Arte Costarricense (Museum of Costa Rican Art) housed in a magnificent bright white Spanish-style building which was originally the airport’s terminal building complete with a lovely turret and control tower - nothing like modern day airports....... Displayed downstairs was a fine collection of mainly twentieth-century Costa Rican paintings and on the same floor several rooms exhibited old photographs of what the area was like when it was San Jose’s Airport. A room upstairs featured four walls of bas-relief wooden carvings, overlaid with gold, portraying scenes of Costa Rica's history since the arrival of the Spanish in 1502. On one wall were scenes from the lives of the indigenous peoples, followed on another by Columbus's arrival. In the small grounds that backed on to the park were several large interesting looking sculptures.





We decided to book an organised tour of ‘downtown’ San Jose rather than tackle the traffic clogged streets ourselves and were picked up by a small coach at our hotel. There was only eight others on the tour including five Mexicans and one Colombian mother with her young baby, all Spanish speaking and us Brits. Our Costa Rican guide Carla translated for us in extremely good English though she had trouble pronouncing my name.





San Jose is not an attractive city by any standards but here and there were some beautiful ornate buildings standing out amongst the ugly modern day architecture - remnants of its boom years when the country was profiting from its growth with coffee exports. Many of these buildings were narrowly sandwiched between colourful shops and markets close to the roads but Carla said that most had been torn down in the mid 70s. The layout of the town was similar to Quito with straight streets looking out to the distant hills, but alas was not nearly as attractive. The streets were crowded with people and traffic - we were held up three times by accidents occurred right in front of us - not a place one would want to drive. Carla told us that about five million people live in the country, three million Costa Ricans, one million Nicaraguans and one million ‘others’. San Jose is home to 1.5 million of these but hardly anyone lives in ‘downtown’, workers travel into the centre by bus from the suburbs hence the congestion, particularly at peak times and accidents are a daily occurrence.





We toured all around the city on the bus and stopped to walk at several places. However it was not that easy getting out of the bus into the flow of oncoming traffic. We walked across a pigeon strewn square to the National Theater, which our guide told us was a national pride for all Ticos. The ornate playhouse was built in 1897 when upper-class Costa Ricans wanted to transform the capital from a small town of 17,000 people into a stop on the world’s opera circuit. A tax was levied, passing the cost on to all Tico citizens, involving the entire country in the process, who in turn still feel a sense of ownership in the theater. Whilst we were there they were building the set for yet another performance. Carla said that t-shirts and tennis shoes are acceptable so no overdressing here. A gigantic mural painting on the ceiling, The Allegory of Coffee and Bananas, painted by Italian J Vila captured the essence of Costa Rican rural life at the turn of the 20th century. Carla told us that the painter wasn’t completely familiar with life in the tropics as a man in the painting held a ‘hand’ of bananas (upside down) and that coffee grows above 800 meters and not at sea level, as the painting portrayed. The painting was Costa Rican’s most famous mural and it also graces the back of the 5 colón banknote. It was strange getting used to the money in CR as initially we felt like millionaires - with £1,000 equivalent to about 800,000 colón.





We also visited the nearby Gold Museum housed in a subterranean building underneath the Plaza de la cultura which was heavily guarded with huge metal doors and located over three underground floors. In the 1950 the Central Bank of Costa Rica started collecting gold archeological pieces in order to preserve Costa Rican cultural patrimony and later added ceramic and stone artifacts. These are now exhibited in the museum some dating back to AD 500. There were many of examples of Pre-Colombian gold artifacts all shining brightly in their display cabinets with excellent detailed notes in Spanish and English - well worthy of a visit.





On our last afternoon in San Jose, after a lovely stroll in the sunshine around the park the rain arrived in torrents, lightening flashed and thunder roared and the noise was deafening, making us jump out of our seats - this was more what we had been expecting in Costa Rica!!!!! Tomorrow we head north east to Samara on the Pacific Coast, a long journey by shuttle bus, hope it stops raining though, - see you there.

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Comments

[Charmian & John]

Hola
Hola, como estas? OK that's my attempt at native lingo!! Glad to hear you & your luggage were eventually reunited & that you have "settled in". Hope you get to see all you have on your list. Looking forward to following you on this leg of your adventure. Love from both of us. xx