18 hours after leaving BDF’s, I stepped out of San Jose airport to a chorus of “Taxi! Taxi!” coming from plump middle aged men in short sleeved shirts. I responded to Maxi Taxi (as I liked the name and he was sweating least) and was soon checking into Hotel Europa in downtown SJ. The room is nice, but neither it, nor the hotel itself, warrant a photo.
After informing cared ones of my safe arrival, I went to bed.
The purpose of staying in Costa Rica wasn’t to see its great nature, but merely as a stop gap before heading onto the Big Three (Guatemala, Belize, Mexico). As such, any descriptions I do give will, I’m sure, be a gross injustice.
I went for a little amble around the city, but then got lost so it ended up being quite long. What I can report is: that the Costa Rican national stadium looks a bit like a triceratops
There are birds with peculiar calls in the national park.
Walking back through town there were also lots of ‘street vendors’, many just having a bag of papayas/ phone cards/ hair bobbles on the floor and then they would just shout. A few on corners set up stalls with more than one fruit, but the majority were one-(wo)man-one-product operations.
The exception to this was a stretch of path where several ladies were all selling the same thing – those little pellets that go bang when you throw them on the floor. They must surely all be working for the person, but it was the selling technique that was amusing. Each spread out equidistantly down the bustling path with shops on both side they would try and stop shoppers to buy their goods (sold out of plastic bags). And in what seemed like exasperation at being largely ignored they would throw down these pellets, punctuate the street noise with a sharp “snap” and invariably get an interested customer come up to them.
But of course the true reason behind my trip here is to find myself a Profile Picture to make my peers envious. Despite all that CR has to offer, the best one I could find was my namesake – a chubby baker
