San Jose, Costa Rica

June 7, 2017 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Two friends are headed to Costa Rica this summer. While they will join a tour, they have a couple of days in San Jose before the tour begins. I promised them I would suggest a few places they might enjoy, El Mercado, the downtown market, the National Theatre, and the precolonial museum which is full of pre-Columbian gold and other ancient artifacts. It remains my favorite but security there is tight. To get in, you must surrender just about everything but your clothes. You get a locker in which to place your valuables; the key to the locker is about all you can take with you. As a consequence, no photos. They do have a gift shop with quality items of all sorts including copies of many of the artifacts and jewelry.

Much of the downtown area is foot traffic only. Vendors sell various goods on the street, you can wander El Mercado, in which various stalls for goods and food are located, and tour the National Theatre. Inside the National Theatre next to the main lobby area is a lovely little restaurant, the perfect place for lunch. The following are photos I took in the National Theatre about one and one-half years ago.

The first photo below is the highway from the airport into San Jose and the second shows a typical downtown pedestrian only area.

I have been to Costa Rica in what in the US is summer and also at Christmastime. Summer here is their rainy season so if you go then, be prepared for rain, sometimes a lot of it. It is sort of a joke that on the east side of the main mountain chain, it is always the rainy season. However, I have been there when it did not rain. Take a sturdy, easy to lug around slicker with a hood because sooner or later it will rain.

The huge advantages of going this time of year are a lot fewer tourists and it is considerably cheaper.

Costa Rican Adventure-Day One

January 1, 2016 / Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

Instead of staying in the US for Christmas, my daughter, grandson, and I went to Costa Rica on a National Geographic Family Adventure for seven days and then rented a car and explored on our own for three additional days. We arrived in San Jose a little after three in the afternoon, met the other tour members and our two guides, Jose and Josie, and headed for our first hotel, the Intercontinental.

Because the capital, San Jose, is at an altitude between 6 and 7 thousand feet, it is cool. On the day of our arrival it was also very windy which made the air seem quite chilly. Altitude and whether you are on the Pacific or Caribbean side are everything in Costa Rica. High elevations are quite cool, lower elevations tropical and hot. The Pacific side is drier, especially in the north. The Caribbean is always wet and rainy especially in the north so the two sides are just the opposite weather wise. Down the middle runs the cordillera, the mountains, which determine many aspects of the weather.

On the road to San Jose from the airport. I know it says San Jose when you make reservations but the airport is not actually in San Jose or even in the same province.

The last time I was in Costa Rica it was summer here and the rainy season there–winter. In much of the country even though it supposedly was the dry season, it did not seem very dry. Look at those clouds.

At the Intercontinental, a large, rather elegant hotel with multiple restaurants and shops, my grandson wanted to buy a plushy sloth in one of the shops. We convinced him to wait. The next day we found it nearly 50% less in a shop at El Mercado.

The food we had at the hotel, however, was excellent, the ceviche especially tasty.

I was quite entranced by this bench, carved out of old wood. It is illegal in Costa Rica to harvest certain woods considered rare and/or endangered. This includes rosewood and mahogany. If you find pieces made from these rarer woods, it is old wood from dead trees or at least that is what it is supposed to be. You can find beautifully made wood furniture in various parts of the country.

We spent only one night and the next morning through lunch in San Jose.

Costa Rica 6: Adventures and Views

July 15, 2012 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Without a doubt Costa Rica holds my vote for most photogenic and greenest country. From the Caribbean and Pacific rain forests to the high mountain town of Monteverde, the words lush, exotic, verdant do not even begin to describe how incredibly rich the landscape is. One of the first spectacular views lay before me across the parking lot from a combination restaurant and souvenir shop where we stopped for snacks.

I did not expect to see multiple mountain streams like in the Rockies, but it seemed we were crossing one nearly constantly. This abundance of water explains their nearly total dependence on hydroelectric power with a little help from wind and thermal energy.

Several of my traveling companions decided to raft this river with class 4 rapids. Something told me I should not do this. After flipping over several times, banged up and bruised, they decided to hike out. In the meantime, I experienced my own adventure, eating a raw turtle egg in salsa at a family restaurant on the top of a nearby mountain.

Beautiful mountain scenery seems endless. I kept 00hing and awing.

This view shows the Bay of Nicoya in the distance from my hotel room in Monteverde. The following photos all show views in the mountains near this little remote town. There is only one road in and out and it is not paved and it is narrow. The town was originally settled by Quakers from Canada who still believe a paved road will ruin the peaceful lifestyle. Both the Quakers and the town are famous for their cheese which was served both plain and fried for breakfast.

This area provides both zip lining and horseback riding for tourists. I elected to ride. However, these horses did not seem well fed and certainly did not want to go very fast. Although I saw a lot of horses in Costa Rica, these were by far the thinest.

The guy who lead us did not ride one of these. He was riding a fancy, prancing, grey Paso Fino.

Look closely and you can see someone zip lining across the forested canyon hundreds of feet below.

When I asked about this tree, I was told it is related to cacao, but not eaten, not by humans anyway.

We traveled down the mountain on another dirt road to visit this elementary school. It housed grades 1-6 with one teacher who is also the principal. The literacy rate in Costa Rica is 98.5.

Playing soccer with the students.

A port on the Pacific on the way to the surfing town of Jaco. Costa Rica exports many agricultural products from both its Pacific and Caribbean ports. This includes bananas, pineapples, hearts of palms, and many tropical flowers.

While many beaches remain unsafe for swimming due to a strong undertow, the beaches at Manuel Antonio National Park are perfect.

To get into Manuel Antonio you have to walk and no parking exists really close. Hiking out we crossed an area where the water rushed around our knees and the sign said, “No Swimming, Crocodiles”.

As a farmer, I like to look at and photograph crops. With all the rain and heat, Costa Rica is the perfect climate for many tropical fruits and rice. On the way back from Manuel Antonio we passed miles of rice fields and Aftican palms which produce palm oil.

Rice.

Coffee, the main export of Costa Rica. In the highlands, coffee grows everywhere even along the berms in places so steep I wondered how the person picking the beans did not fall over. Of course, I wondered the same thing about the dairy cattle grazing on the mountain slopes.

We did stop in Sarchi, the town famous for its furniture and oxcart industry. Oxcarts remain the national symbol of Costa Rica. Because of the mountainous terrain, when Costa Rican coffee initially became famous and its most successful crop, the only way to get the coffee to the coasts for export was to use oxcarts.

We spent very little time in cities. However, as we left San Jose near the end of the trip and headed for the Caribbean side, I took some hurried photographs out the window.