In the battle between exhaustion and hunger, I woke up at 7 a.m. But this was not the outcome of the battle, but rather was the big motive of getting our stuff organized and ourselves out the door. Dodie had already been working on that since well before 7.
I did a quick stroll down the corridor to see where we had actually landed last night. The modest hotel had a very modest garden and also a little pool. No birds to be seen, though!
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| The pool and little garden |
After getting our gear mostly in order for our plan to stash it at the downtown hotel and then to walk the town for the day, we made our way to the breakfast room. We found there some Europeans, maybe German, already installed. But their presence could not turn the offering into a German breakfast. It was rather much more like American, with the sole exception of abundant bananas and mandarins. The American touches were genuine seeming Tang, Kraft processed cheese slices, and Wonder type bread. |
| Don't be fooled by the apparent croissants, they were inedible. |
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| Enough to get going, but definitely a one jammer. The one jam, to be sure, was guanabana. |
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| And look a banana from ... Costa Rica! |
We got the front desk to help with calling a taxi for the 20 km ride into San Jose. We slightly choked on the $US 35 cost of the ride, but we would soon see that from the driver's point of view it was a rough ride, and he merited the money. We did see a bus on our street bound for San Jose for around $2, but we had no idea where it would really go and how long it would spend going there. No, better right now to be the gormless gringos than the bold adventurers!
When I say the driver merited the fare, I mean the road was clogged with traffic all the way and not easy to drive. But more to our point, we were horrified to realize that on the bikes we would have had NO CHANCE of arriving alive. There was zero shoulder, and often not even a white line. And had we been so bold as to take the right lane, drivers would have had no place to go around us, and would have been forced to squeeze by, assuming they had not hit us directly. Well. as I said yesterday, maybe RWGPS or Komoot could have found a way, but it could never be direct or easy. We also noted mountains standing around in the middle distance, and we would not want to get into skirmish with them!
The taxi dropped us at our Hotel Cultura Plaza, where we left most of our gear, before hitting the street. The town gave the impression of low, miscellaneous, and dilapidated buildings. Well, we did not expect Paris, but we were still searching for some, any, of the "magic".
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| Interesting but dilapidated building across the street from the hotel. |
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| One US dollar is about 515 Colones. So these breakfasts cost about 9 dollars Canadian. |
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| Interesting but graffitied corner building down the street. Still not Paris, or even New Orleans. |
Our walk brought us to "Cultura Plaza", the namesake of our hotel. This contains three museums, as shown in the photo, but we did not try to find our way in, since of course our first objective was the Market (s) and the Cathedral.
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| First bird photo, a Long Tailed Grackle |
The first market we reached was not the Central Market but a kind of auxiliary craft market. This turned out to be just like the central market in layout, but without the food. The layout in question is a warren of narrow corridors with very many little stalls, crammed with product. We have already seen this lots, in Yucatan, and of course this is not even vaguely close to a European covered market.
One of the product types that caught my eye was what I previously would call Guatemalan style embroidery. And here in the photo below we also see the Sloth, which is very much a symbol of the place, much like the Stork or the Flamingo in other countries.
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Part of a typical stall
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There were zillions of stalls with goods like this:
We took to the street again, still eager to get a feel for this place. One good sign was a chicken BBQ place. Chicken BBQ is always good!
Our improved spirits from the chicken place took another bit of a dive, as we looked down a typical street and again realized that this was no place for bikes. The street featured not only heavy traffic and no shoulder or bike lane, but also a bike eating ditch!
We took a break to dive into a Claro SIM shop. We found that the offering were about twice as expensive as Mexico, which means half the cost of Canada! We went for the smallest plan, a month of service with 12gB for about $Can 37. In France and Germany (but not England) they had wanted a lot of ID to establish a phone number, and maybe a verifiable local address as well (with the exception of the costly Orange tourist SIM). Here they were big into ID too, not only copying my passport but also taking a photo of me holding the passport and the SIM up. Whatever! It works!
Our next hopeful sign was a Cathedral themed hamburger place. That is a bit like a Jeanne d'Arc pharmacy in Orleans. Things were looking up.
We encountered the first of many pedestrian streets, and with them the first of the "real" spirit of the town. We would soon be into scads of shoe and clothing stores, restaurants, electronics stores, bakeries, etc. And despite the vaunted touristic nature of Costa Rica, the overall impression was of the public doing its own unique thing - thronging or selling or hanging out in the streets and practicing their own unique culture and language. I liked that a lot.
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| The public, hanging out. |
The whole experience took a turn for the "great" when we reached the central square, by the cathedral. Here was the type of focal point I could get a grip on, and I recognized it as such pretty much right away. Dodie confirmed, and nailed down the way to the market, by a favourite method of approaching some (to us, maybe not to criminals or ordinary citizens) ultra cute police officers.
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| Dodie and the Policia |
Indeed we were just across from the cathedral.
The central square, already had Christmas decorations and in fact a New Year's countdown display.
Near the cathedral is an Anne Frank memorial, a little unusual for out here.
And there is a Pope Jean Paul II statue, commemorating his visit. That guy was everywhere!
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| The Cathedral |
Inside, the cathedral was really lovely. A service was going on, so we did not swarm around overly.
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| The characteristic "rays of power" of a Spanish Jesus. |
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| Plaque for the visit of JP II, 1983. |
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| The painting behind the altar. |
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| There was lots of nice stained glass like this. |
Across the street from the cathedral, an impressive but unknown building, as we began our trek to the Market.
Our walk to the market took us through the active pedestrian streets. I rather like this kind of thing, but I think Dodie was still less than impressed. She is not big on cities at all. And as I learned from her later, the hyper crowded and narrow market did even less for her. But for now, let's walk along:
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| We noticed all along numbers of police on bicycles. Of course any bicycles attract our attention, and these were the only cyclists we saw. I lurked into a corner for a surreptitious photo of them, but Dodie marched right up and asked for a photo op. |
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| Lots of people! |
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| We have arrived! |
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Does anyone here have claustrophobia? Dodie looks a little freaked.
So many little kitchens:
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We were having an impossible time choosing a place to eat, but we passed one little stall with an open table, and a young couple nearby with something that looked yummy. Dodie learned from them that this as a "consado", which I think just means combo plate. Even so, we sat down and just said we'll have what that guy has.
It turned out to be what you see below. The chicken part was really good, as were the beans and rice and pasta. The drink is fresh papaya!
You can zoom in on the menu if you want to make your own choice!
We stopped by a stall with a lot of souvenirs, and I successfully begged for and got a Costa Rica sticker. I guess it will go on my handlebar bag, though we are not cycling here.
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| "Pura Vida" is a national slogan here, much like "Go Slow" in Belize. |
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| I don't know if 1200 colones/kg is a good or bad price for papaya. |
Outside the market, I was naturally looking for desert, and came up with this place.
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The cinnamon bun was rather "lightweight", typical for this region. The coffee was good, but I am not much of a coffee connoisseur.
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| Just down the street was this coffee roaster, mentioned in our guide as a premier coffee source in the city. |
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| It really did not seem like I had missed much by getting my coffee up the street. |
We carried on walking for a bit more, spotting things like this building with a Costa Rica themed fresco.
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| This fellow has joined the traffic jam, but only with a hand truck. |
Our final major destination was the Church of Our Lady of La Merced. It's one of the oldest churches in town, but of course since this is not Europe its construction date is a recent 1894. The architectural style is deemed German neo-Gothic.
The church inside has beautifully decorated columns and some simple but elegant stained glass.
There were also some sort of lifelike or contemporary statues, like Jean Paul II and Mother Theresa here:
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| Mother Theresa is popular, but has been heavily criticized by thinkers like Christopher Hitchens. |
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| These statues are also unique for their realism. I assume the nun got glasses because she is a teacher. |
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| Saint Charbel, according to Google Lens. He is also famous in Mexico. |
We returned to the hotel, grabbed our stuff from the storage closet and made our way to what turned out to be a windowless room with just one dim light bulb. Well, we have seen it all before, most notably in Merida in Yucatan, where we have drawn some pretty rotten rooms. The one most "fondly" remembered was on the main square, alright, but you had to pass through a restaurant to get to it, where it was located by the "hotel" laundry. The staff used to come and smoke outside our door, at a little table.
But here at Cultura Plaza we do have some fabulous benefits. There is a small desk, with a power plug, and there is power at both sides of the bed! And it has AC! We will sleep soundly, at Volkswagen standard 22 degrees, or less.
Back in our room we tried to assess what we had seen. In the end, I liked San Jose. But it was too crowded, hot, and noisy for Dodie. Tomorrow we will try a slightly different tack, hiking a little out of town to the grounds of the University of Costa Rica, where they say one can spot a sloth. My camera could like that - no strain on the shutter speed adjustment!
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