Saturday 3rd August
The flight was 6 and a half hours and not very nice really, we were both so tired but the seats didn't recline so we hardly managed to get any sleep at all. I woke from a doze about a hour and a half before landing and we were just going over what would have been around Guatemala I think, and even though we were high you could see some mountains through the clouds, it looked so beautiful. We had pancakes and syrup, fruit and yoghurt for breakfast and I watched glee whilst I ate it, a pang of mourning and sadness watching finn on screen and knowing that he is now dead. So sad.
We got off the plane at panama and waited around for maybe45 minutes or so before boarding the next one to go back up to Costa Rica. It took about an hour and the reason we did it was because we saved money doing it the way. We got the first glimpse of how bad Central Americans seem to be with seating numbers, they just sit wherever they want even with tickets.
Once in Costa Rica we got a taxi the 20 minutes or so into the city of san jose where we were staying. The hotel was actually one of the better hotels we've stayed in with a reception that spoke English which was nice. We had to wait perhaps half an hour or so for our room to be ready but we were so tired we didn't care in the slightest and were happy to just slob out on the couch.
Once in the room it was very nice, it had its own little bathroom and everything was clean with a nice kind of Caribbean feel to it. We looked into where we were going next and booked a couple of things before showering and getting right into bed. We slept for about 2 hours before deciding to head out for a walk.
The city is nothing special really, it's hard to explain. It's kind of an in between between the poorer areas we've been to and not, it's a combination of fairly good shops and streets and not so great areas that you wouldn't want to be walking down by yourself. Regardless the only things they seem to sell is what I can only describe as tat! It was interesting all the same with crowds of people everywhere all talking Spanish but looking just like anybody we know if I can say that without sounding racist. We felt comfortable with that because we felt like if we just walked like we knew where we were nobody would know if we lived there or if we didn't. The traffic lights make a sound like birds chirping which was a bit strange to get used to, and there were lots of people on the streets kind of shouting and trying to sell stuff like phone cards.
Because we were so tired still and not quite settled we just went into one of the many McDonald's and ordered food in there, our first attempt at ordering in spanish. Then after that walked back in the rain before collapsing back onto the bed in the room.
The rest of the evening was spent just napping and chilling out, I watched greys anatomy because the Internet allowed me to and Liam did whatever Liam does when I'm not paying attention!
Sunday 4th August.
Alarm went off, oh dear. Jet lag in full force! Managed to get up and into the restaurant for the complimentary breakfast before it closed for the morning but couldn't really eat very much.
We managed to make it out of the hotel for around 10am and walked to the national museum. It was a big yellow building that used to be a fort, and then a prison, but is now a museum. As you enter you walk through a butterfly garden, and lets face it we've all been to one before so I wasn't particularly overwhelmed at first. But then we ended up spending ages in there due to the size of the things, and how close you could get whilst they were feeding on fruit. It was so great being able to watch them feed, I'd never seen it before like that. We also saw big caterpillars on the leaves, then came across a hutch where they had been collecting the chrysalises from the leaves and putting them inside to keep them safe whilst they transformed. Apparently some can take up to a year to transform, and we immediately were drawn to one area with 2 clearly newly born butterflies that had fallen from their cocoon. One seemed ok but couldn't fly yet and the other looked like it was wearing a cape because its wings were really wet and it was pulling itself along with some difficulty. We were lucky enough to catch one just as it started coming out and watch it start to finish, and see how they hang upside down and kind of secrete water to dry themselves out. We could only assume the wet one had fallen before it had chance to dry out a bit better. It fell out of the hutch a couple of times, and a couple of times we caught it before it hit the ground. Liam picked it up and tried to make to better, in the end he left it on a lower level and hoped for the best for the poor thing. In the meantime the butterfly that couldn't fly took a death plunge and landed on my shoe, unable to fly it climbed up my leg so I picked it up and put it on a big leaf.
The rest of the museum was ok, it went through the various historical stages of the country and some information on the early prehistoric nomadic people and how they survived, then how they started learning to plant seeds and become agricultural tribes. There were lots of artefacts made of stone, bone, shells and all that kind of thing which were really good. They started making pottery and gold ornaments, all that kind of stuff. It also had some information on when it used to be a prison and some stunning corridors with pictures of the wildlife in the rainforests. We saw a hummingbird in the gardens which was great, and also such a weird insect which we had no idea what it was. It was yellow and black, on a web like a spider but more like a crab in shape and movement. It was very weird but the camera wouldn't focus on it so no evidence is available.
We then walked to another museum more in the centre, which was more expensive to get in but pretty good for an hour or so to walk around it. There was a lot of stuff on the culture and social aspects of money and how it had adapted over the years. Stuff on the animals and in particular the felines and how important they are to tribal culture. Lots of gold artefacts from thousands of years ago to see and nice information boards on culture and how there are still I think it said 60,000 tribal members in 8 different groups in Costa Rica today.
We went for a walk around the town, saw a man with a snake, and went to a restaurant for a cheap eat which involved trying to speak more Spanish. Then we went for a mcflurry from McDonald's in which Liam found it extremely funny because I asked for a mcflurry in my normal accent and it sounded very strange. After that we walked back to the hotel and chilled out and napped again for a couple of hours before heading to the bar for a drink. The evening was spent doing nothing really and making sure we had everything together for our early start in the morning.
