07.10.2012 – 07.10.2012  31 °C

I had a chance to have a nice sleep in this morning but the old body clock was not interested in sleeping in and instead got me going at 5am! Needless to say I didn’t get out of bed at 5 but instead dozed in bed and read my book until 8am for brekky.

Breakfast was some muesli, yoghurt and toast so I was pretty happy with the options. Once we’d broken our fast our group headed out to see the sites of San Jose. Allan (our guide) set a pretty brisk pace as we did a good trek thru the main sites of downtown. I think I said yesterday but San Jose is a good mixture of old Spanish Colonial architecture mixed with a seventies inspired concrete jungle. Plenty of holes in the pavement, random pieces of re-inforced steel sticking out of concrete mixed in with lush green parklands and gorgeous 19^th Century houses.

The main crop for most of the early years of Costa Rica was coffee and so the few remaining colonial homes are from the Coffee Kings who used to be the ruling elite of the country. Many of these original homes are still in pretty good repair, but every now and again Allan would point out to us an old mansion that is in desperate need of a few million spent on it to bring it up from a western ‘condemned’ status!

Away from the old Coffee suburbs and you get a real feel for modern San Jose. It’s a real blend of shanty houses (plenty of rusty corrugated iron in evidence) and eighties style ugly apartment buildings. The thing is, if you were reading my description you would immediately think that this town is ugly.. Its not! The dagginess of the homes is really improved by all of the bright colours that the houses are painted and the almost continuous graffiti art that covers many blank walls. When I say graffiti art I don’t mean those ugly tag lines that you would see in Brisbane or Sydney.. I mean really funky pieces of art that are made using spray cans.. Really gives San Jose a life of its own! Not only are the dwellings brightly coloured but much of the sidewalk is filled with hawkers selling various different types of wares.. I do think that hawkers really give a city some character, it might not always be pleasant to feel like you should constantly buy, but it does give a city a really busy character that I think many western cities lack. Actually, while we are talking hawkers let me explain about the CR lottery. On every street corner we noticed a person sitting behind a card table selling what looked like raffle tickets. After noticing a few of these card tables one of my fellow travellers asked Allan what was happening.. Today is Sunday, and on Sunday local people sit on street corners trying to sell lottery tickets in the state lottery. It is a way for the local people to earn some money (they get a commission on each ticket sold) and I guess the locals get the chance to win the jackpot (which is normally about 60,000 USD)!

Allan gave us two great break opportunities today, a great cup of coffee in the National Theatre (19^th Century gorgeous colonial building). Yep, Costa Rican coffee is good… and it’s great to know that I’m drinking it just like the locals. We also did a stop for lunch at a local restaurant which reminded me of a Mexican restaurant. Most of the guys had the special for the day, beans and rice with plantain (kind of liked a fried banana) and their choice of meat. Knowing what their meal was going to be like I opted for a Fajita style meal of chicken with capsicum and onion.. really tasty! Another interesting thing we discovered about CR is the USD. Here in CR the currency is Collones (pronounced, Col-lon-nez) and approx. 500 CRC= 1USD. The biggest industry in CR is tourism, so most restaurants, shops and tourist operators also accept USD. In fact, most ATMs dispense both USD and CRC and Allan has recommended we just get USD out of the ATMs. When we get given change we get it back in CRC so we always have a bit of both on hand!

Most shops will also accept a bit of both; for example, if you are buying something for $22, you can pay with a $20 bill and then 1000CRC! I’m finding the constantly switching currencies a bit unnerving but I guess give me a day or two and I’ll be used to it.

The storm clouds were brewing but we decided to keep pushing on and go for a bus ride to see one of the big parks in San Jose. The bus ride was interesting. Western style bus (in fact, apart from not having the wheelchair access part, it’s the same as BCC bus) but at a cost of about 0.22USD.. Bargain! One of the cheapest bus rides I’ve taken in a while. We stood and sat on the bus for about twenty minutes until we got to this large park on the outskirts of the main CBD. The park was packed. I guess many locals live in apartments so on the weekends they head to the park to get some space? Football seemed to be main sport of choice with many games being played across the park. For me, the most interesting sport was at the skate park. But, not your average skate park! There were no skateboards in evidence, no half pipes or jumps or stuff, but instead one big roller skating rink! Speed roller skaters on the outside and couples and children cruising around on the inside! It’s the kind of park that I haven’t seen since I was a kid. Apparently, roller skating has been a huge sport in CR since the 50s and remains a popular sport even today.

Our trip back into town was fairly uneventful and by the time we got back we were all feeling a little thirsty so went hunting some sort of pub. One thing that has surprised me here in San Jose is the lack of obvious bars and clubs. We saw a few sex clubs the previous evening on our way to dinner but not your usual ‘go and have a drink and listen to music’ pub. We didn’t manage to find what I would consider a ‘usual’ pub but we did find somewhere to have a drink and listen to music. When we asked at the front desk the guy directed us to the casino… None of us were too keen but seemingly we didn’t have a lot of choices so we headed out. The casino was not quite what I was expecting… It is actually a bingo hall! Downstairs you can while away your time on poker machines stylised as bingo machines and upstairs you can enjoy the thrill of the real game complete with those big textas. Fortunately we discovered that if we walked thru the whole hall we would finally come to a pub type thing. The ‘pub’ reminded me of the old place that M&D used to go for trivia on Friday nights at Twin Towns.. Too funny! By the time we made it to the pub we were not keen to go too much further to find a drink so settled in to the fun and excitement of San Jose’s version of Twin Towns!! Like the old adage, you make your own fun, so although the pub wasn’t quite what we were expecting we had a great couple of hours enjoying some of the local brews (which are called Imperial by the way) and some cheap cocktails for Ursula and myself. Nice way to end our day of wandering!

Our dinner venue for the evening was at a restaurant attached to a hotel not too far from where we were staying. The food was tasty, I just had a salad and a bowl of corn soup (it reminded me more of pumpkin soup- look and texture- with the main ingredient being corn), both of which were gigantic so I certainly didn’t go home hungry. Ursula myself and two of the boys finished our evening back at the Bingo Hall (we discovered it was the only place open for drinks on a Sunday night—we are in a heavily Catholic country) where we bopped away to Abba, Grease Megamix and heaps of unknown Spanish songs for a couple of hours. We finally fell into bed pretty tired at 10.30pm.