Sorry, yesterday's post got cut short because while I was typing, Sean cut his head in the shower and was bleeding all over the place and I had to go downstairs and ask Jorge at reception for bandaids. Jorge came back upstairs with me to make sure that the cut wasn't serious and we didn't have to take Sean to the hospital for stitches. Jorge also went out and bought us some gauze. We put pressure on the cut and then I tied two bandanas around Sean's head to keep the gauze in place. Sean did not like that I involved our hotel guy, but I was pretty freaked out, butt tired, and I thought that I might have seen a tiny bit of brain sticking out of the cut and I didn't really trust myself. (That bit of brain was just skin, FYI. Sean is totally totally fine and the cut is dried up already.)
Anyways, we were both a bit shaken and Sean looked like Old Mother Hubbard. It took us a long time to fall asleep. We both had dreams of him bleeding out. (SEAN IS FINE IT WAS JUST A SMALL CUT.) A dramatic first night.
But back to the first day. We walked around central San Jose. It was a pretty relaxing first day. They have many fabulous plazas and parks where the local people gather and hang out. At one plaza, there were crowds and pigeons and kids feeding the pigeons and ladies selling corn to feed the pigeons. There were also a bunch of clowns making balloon figures and some sad/dirty looking costumed Elmo and Micky Mouse. We saw one couple walk past holding a shrieking child. The kid was afraid of the Elmo.
Another park we walked through was having an arts festival. A huge pillared dome sat in the middle of the park, like San Francisco's museum near the Golden Gate Bridge. Beneath the dome was a very enthusiastic drum circle. The drumming was really rhythmic and cool and made me want to dance. Around the edges of the park were people walking on stilts, portrait artists, teenagers jump-roping, a hula-hooping contest, tables with checkers and chess and jenga and other games, people teaching kids how to mold a clay nativity scene, and some craft tables selling their stuff. The park was full of people and full of life. There were really tall, leafy trees and exotic looking flowers growing. Is was pretty inspiring to walk through. We read later that the dome is called the Temple of Music.
We also walked past a group of young boys playing soccer in the street. I became a little bit stalkery and took like fifteen pictures of them. They were really cute! They were all randomly wearing red shirts! It looked like a scene out of a movie.
The biggest draw of San Jose was the gold museum. This museum houses an extensive collection of pre-Columbian figures made out of gold. It was super cool. The museum is like a vault, a huge cement building four stories below the ground. They had great exhibits on how the native peoples made the gold figures-- first they made a wax figure, then a clay mold around it, melted out the wax, poured in molten gold, and finally cracked open the clay. There were tiny figurines of frogs, birds, lizards, butterflies, and spirits. Sean describes them as, "The shit they saw in the forest."
The gold museum was connected to a money museum, so we got to learn all about Costa Rica's currency and how it came to be. It was also really neat, even though all the exhibit signage was in Spanish. Their bills are super colorful. Some of the old coins, which were made by coffee plantation owners, had great detail. A third section of the museum was art. It was boring. Except for one large sculpture that looked like a flaming vagina.
Then we headed back to dinner at the loneliest hotel restaurant, and I already wrote about that. Awesome first day. Some observations:
- There seem to be no municipal codes governing sidewalk or driveways. Every street has a different sized and patterned sidewalk. Most of them look like they haven't been touched since they were laid fifty years ago.
- There are drunk homeless people in every country.
- Lots and lots of police all over the place. The backs of their uniforms had "POLICIA" written in fluorescent reflective plastic. And they traveled in large packs.
- We don't quite understand how the street lights work. We've made a rule for ourselves, which is, "Don't get hit."
- Sean was really disappointed that the TVs in the restaurants and bars were showing futbol and the rodeo, and not NFL.
- We are fucking exhausted.
- We are super excited for breakfast.
- All the craftsy souvenirs in the market are probably made in Guatemala.
- There is trash everywhere. So much litter. (But very strict no-smoking rules.)
- We love our hotel staff. Hotel Presidente.
- We still haven't grasped the currency exchange rate. Everything looks like it's outrageously expensive. For example, our KFC lunch cost 7,000 colones.
- Sean REALLY wants to tip everyone and I have to remind him that they don't do that here.
