Now we know the way to San Jose

PUNTARENAS (SAN JOSE): Thursday, February 4, 2010

Not only do we know the way to San Jose but also it seems that most Costa Ricans know the way. In a country of 5 million people, 3 million of them live in the valley that houses San Jose, and 1 million people actually live in San Jose.

According to surveys, Costa Ricans are the happiest people in the world, and our guide Daniel is the poster child for these surveys. He is cheerful even at 8 a.m. and can't wait to show us his country. He tells us that Puntarenas is a pretty rough-looking town so it is best to "get out of Dodge" for the day, even though we may want to check out the art markets and liquor store near the port when we return. Daniel is very excited about the national election for president on Sunday. He predicts that Costa Rica will elect its first woman president, Laura Miranda, a 51-year-old highly competent candidate whom Ken thinks is very attractive. If you hear the outcome of the election, please email us with the winner because we get very little news from the outside world. For Sara, who cannot start the day without reading at least one newspaper, this is not as bad as it may sound. Who wants to spoil paradise with reality?

The way to San Jose is up and down winding mountain roads (two small lanes)with S curves following S curves. With a stop at a souvenir shop, the small town of Sarchi that is the home of many Costa Rican native products (including their hand-painted, hardwood oxcarts and the largest oxcart in the world), and lunch at a typical Costa Rican country restaurant, the trip takes more than four hours. Daniel promises us that we will take the new super highway back to Puntarenas, which should shorten our trip back by at least 40 minutes. We also see the metal church in Grecia, voted the cleanest town in Costa Rica, where you can not hear a word that the priest says if it is raining. We also see coffee fields. Coffee is known as the "golden grain" and the fields are shaded by the Central American Coral Tree, imported from Australia, and produces nitrates to nourish the plants. At lunch, we enjoyed fish, chicken and beef accompanied by a delicious local beer, Imperial.

What can we say about San Jose, when we finally get there at 1 p.m.? The city is a huge megatropolis with the addition of very narrow city streets (mostly one way), bumper-to-bumper traffic any time of the day, everyone on the streets (except the motorcycle riders) talking on cell phones while not paying attention to their driving, and people who make illegal U-turns causing everyone in the bus to jar forward. Daniel tells us that Costa Ricans are the nicest people in the world until they get behind the wheel of a car and that 47 percent of all unnatural deaths in the country are due to automobile accidents.

Highlights of San Jose are numerous. We saw the construction of Costa Rica's national stadium, which is being funded and built by China. The national sport is soccer in the morning, soccer in the evening and soccer at supper time. The stadium also will house a track, Olympic-sized swimming pool and a driving school, which, will luck, will reduce the number of accidents, injuries and fatalities. In the distance, we viewed one of the worst jails in history that has been reborn as a national museum for children.

Supposedly, San Jose was built around the National Theater, which was opened in 1891 with no seats. Everyone was told to bring their best chairs from home if they wanted to sit. The theater boasts 24-karat gold gilding, widow's windows on the front of the sides so that the widows were not seen in public and a mega-large chandelier. Outside the vendors sell the five-colon bill, worth about a penny so it costs more to print the colorful bill than what it is worth. However, these ingenious people charge $1 for the bill so it is a money-maker for those who are creative.

The old army fort is now the Museum of History. Costa Rica has no army, which they think is a good thing. The red in the national flog represents the blushing of the farmers' cheeks as they work in the field. Daniel gave an excellent tour of the musem that included an exhibit of the nationalities that melded together to create the Costa Rican people (an interesting note is that the Chinese came there in the 1700s to find work and escape the over population of China at that time) and the large spheres of volcanic rock found all over the country. No one knows what their use was (bowling balls with humans as pins?).

For us the most striking thing was the use of Constantina wire (circular barbed wire) on the houses, stores and buildings in the large city of San Jose and the smallest of villages. We asked Daniel at the end of our tour about the barbed wire. He informed us that while Costa Rica is the safest country in Central America, the citizens do want to prevent crime. (This is an interesting commentary on the rest of South America--ask Sara about her student from El Salvador who kept missing class with the excuse that his uncle and old relatives had been kidnapped so the family had conferences to arrange the ransom payments.)The new super highway has two, three and even four lanes with median strips and was a much smoother drive.

Our souvenirs were a blue polo shirt bought by Ken himself without the help of Sara, a five-pack of Costa Rican cigars for $10 bargained down by Ken from $25, and a six-pack of Imperial beer that Ken promises to share with Sara.

Our next stop is Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, where all the passengers who go ashore take a tour to Antiqua, which is an oasis in this very poor country. Our travel guide says that Antiqua is the Fantasy Land that Disney would have created, and that is a World Heritage Site with stunning colonial architecture.