Today I hope to dip into the Carribean for the first time, but here are the last of the captures from the Quepos side of the Pacific.
The great thing about this national park is that the forest paths all lead to the beach, so almost everyone on our tour opted to stay there at the end of our walk. We had places to be, so we left with our guide who couldn’t help but point our every mangrove and every fern he saw on our way out.
Swipe to see a slo-mo sloth sequence.
Pray for my laptop. It’s so hot and clammy here, it’s literally overheating and refusing to boot up without some gentle coaxing. It’s struggling to be pura vida, magn.
Here are some more drive-by captures from the roads to and from San Jose.
Things like museums close early in Costa Rica — like, 4:00 pm early, which I’ve never experienced before — so I wasn’t sure what would be open by the time we got to San Jose. I’d already seen that Cementerio Obrero was one of those places but googling it on the road seemed to indicate that it was open later than I thought, so we decided to go there first. Christine has been interested in visiting cemeteries to look at the old tombstone and mausoleum art, to draw inspiration for her next project. So we hailed an Uber that turned out to be the most dysfunctional Uber in Costa Rica, running on empty and literally lurching to a stop in the middle of the highway when it wasn’t hurtling through intersections like a bat from hell; I think the only reason we’re still alive is because of the bumper-to-bumper traffic most of the way (note: many cars were missing a bumper).
But when we got there, it turned out that what I’d originally seen was correct. The places closed at 4:00 pm. Luckily, a lot of the pretty statues were still visible from the sidewalk, so we walked the perimeter for a while, until we saw a section with barbed wire across it that seemed to indicate that this particular street is designated “sketch.” We hope to come back on our return journey.
We didn’t have a lot of time to explore before the sun set, but it was a breathe of fresh air, both literally and figuratively. San Jose is in the center of the country, which has a cooler climate than the coast. It’s also a bustling metropolis, which really is where I’m in my element. This trip has been an interesting oscillation between FarmVille and suburbia, so it was nice to have some time where I’m most at home.
We’re heading back to San Jose tomorrow and I doubt that we’ll have tons of time before the sun sets again, but I’m looking forward to more flaneurie.