It took us a couple of hours of wandering around, checking hostels before we found one we liked, Hostel Pangea. Owned and operated by a local who has capitalised on the success of this, the original hostel, and opened five more in various destinations. If you are coming to San Jose and want a place to stay for a night or two it is hard to say no to $32 a night for two people in a decent room. Bathrooms are shared for the most part, there is a small pool, several large, well appointed lounge areas, a full bar and decent restaurant, a night club with mirrors and dancing pole (not in use when we were here) and a mechanical bull (also not in use), lots of interesting people of all ages (really) and to cap it off good music of various sorts playing in the common areas. Highly recommend this place.
This week has been fairly mild for San Jose, actually almost chilly and overcast. It has been nice settling in and exploring again instead of frenetic rushing to see everything in a limited time. We took a couple of days to just laze around, sleep in, chill at the hostel, suck down a few beers, polish off the rum, snack and so on. We did get out a bit of course, mainly to get more money as this is a cash-only establishment ok?, senor.
We hit up several museums, El Museo de Jade (HaDeh), you know, that greenish rock and El Museo de Arte Contemporanea y Diseno. The latter was a little sparse but interesting, the current exhibition was a discussion of the intransigence of humanity and the perniciousness of poverty and the the pressures of life. All in Spanish and I am pleased to say that for the most part we could read and understand the signs, yay.
The Jade Museum is good, a lot of really good pre-columbian artifacts, an seemingly endless display if the same shaped main necklace ornament that looked like it could also double as some sot of scraper/knife thing. It is a good museum and worth checking out – not a patch on Mexico’s Museo de Anthropologia but then there isn’t that much of the native life from precolumbian times anyway thanks to the jungle and the weather.
We had a couple of great walks in the City, wandering out to the Los Yoses neighborhood after the Jade Museum for a good 5 miles or more roundtrip. We stopped in at a local restaurant filled with locals not tourists but close to the center of town. Had great casados, more than we could eat as usual. The following day, our last in San Jose for this leg and a Sunday, we walked down to the main park at the west end of town. It is a lot like Golden Gate Park, lakes, trails, futbol fields and so on but unlike GGP it was packed with picnicking families and of course it was Valentine’s Day so there plenty of giggling lovers.
At the west end of the park the City is building a new futbol stadium. I was surprised to see that all the usual warning signs (where helmets, be careful…and so on) were is Chinese – not a lick of Spanish anywhere! There was also a large contingent of 30 to 40 year old Chinese men speaking nothing but Chinese seemingly wandering around the park on what must have been there day off. There were huge dorm buildings at one side of the side and a big bus. My guess is that the labor has been brought in from China – truly amazing!
Just before going out to the park we also strolled the four blocks to the bus terminal and bought our tickets which were simply receipts from the cash register with destination, date/time and seat number on them. This being Costa Rica, there is a bus terminal or a street-side stand for each bus line and each bus line only serves a small area. This makes it difficult to plan trips since one has to use San Jose as the hub and then arrive on or more days in advance so tickets for the next leg can be bought. Also these bus “terminals” are way spread out!
Anyway the process to get to the Caribbean south is easy (they have a real terminal building – very well organized) and while the bus had no AC and was fully booked the windows let in a nice breeze and the scenery is wonderful. There is one pee-break in Puerto Limon (or Puerto Lemon as my friend Mik calls it) which is the main east coast port. Big, bustling and not very nice looking – don’t go unless you have to.
After our painless ticket process we wandered over to the butterfly garden located in what is left of the tropical forest that once covered the Central Valley. This is a not-to-be-missed assuming you like butterflies and jungles. We were lucky as it was overcast and cool so there were no other guests there when we went and the butterflies were moving sluggishly. http://www.butterflygardencr.com/spiro2.htm. Really great, loads of butterflies in a beautiful and tranquil setting. Almost can’t hear the traffic and sometimes you can’t depending on where you are in the garden.
We also wandered over to the town center on our way to the park and discovered that the Gold Museum was having a cultural event, part of which was Costa Rican food, 1500 colones a plate (~$3), delicious and definitely not what you would be likely to find easily in restaurants particularly San Jose, the bastion of every American fast food joint you can imagine.
I have posted the photos already so click the link at the right side of this page and look for Costa Rica – San Jose_Wk 3.
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