Last Day in San Jose
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We´ve been busy – yesterday we went to the Gold and Jade museums, did a walking tour of the city and met several interesting characters. Today we hired a fantastic taxi driver named Jose to take us outside of the city to some sites that are not conveniently accessed by public transit, but are well worth seeing. We went to the Dokas Coffee plantation, Zoo Ave (a zoo that´s full of endangered or injured animals that are being rehabilitated before re-introduction to the wild), and a town famous for it´s arts and crafts called Sarchi where they make beautiful wood and leather furniture, and they´re famous for their painted ox carts – if you can be famous for that.
Here´s a few crazy things we learned yesterday: Costa Rica did not have its own currency until the 1840´s and it just developed its own bank in the 1950´s. The currency unit, the colon is actually named after Christopher Columbus, whose name in Spanish is Cristobal Colon. During the “coffee crisis” early in the 1900´s the country was so short of currency that plantation workers were paid with boletos or tokens that could be plastic or metal tokens that indicated a unit of currency. At one point, there was such a shortage of coin currency in Costa Rica that the government just stamped coins from other countries that were being circulated through trade with an “official currency” stamp so they could be used in this country. It seems like a creative solution to an odd problem. At the jade and gold museums we learned how devastating the Spanish occupation of Costa Rica was to the countries Mayan artifacts and antiquities – case in point, there are almost no artifacts and antiquities as they were all pilfered, stolen &/or melted down by the Spanish. Those that did survive were fun stylized depictions of local animals, Shawmen and everyday acts that may be considered for ceremony at some point. There were several pre-Columbian examples of Mayan didoes – I wounder why the Spanish didn´t want those? Perhaps they were intimidated by them.
We met a couple of Catholic priests at lunch yesterday – one from USA, one from Australia. They were good fun to talk to. We broke all the travel conversation rules – it was all religion and politics and sports. They have been doing missionary work for the Catholic church in various countries all over the world for 30 years. Right now they´re traveling around South and Central America at the expense of an affluent Brazilian business man who´s financing them in order to work a few years off his perceived time in purgatory for his past sins. He must have sinned a lot – they were staying in much nicer places than we can afford.
Today we learned a lot about coffee at the Doka Plantation. Coffee plants flower from March to May, and the beans are harvested from November to February. Pickers may pick 14 – 15 baskets of beans a day (25 lbs each) by hand, and they will make approximately $14.00 for their trouble. It takes approximately 5 lbs of coffee in its raw form to get 1 lb of coffee in its roasted form, so we have no right to complain about the price of coffee. The plantation we visited has regulations about child labour (you can´t pick unless you´re 15 years or older) and they provide housing, medical, water and electricity for the Guatemalans who come to pick for 4 months. It´s nice to know that some plantations are socially responsible – remember that the next time you buy coffee. Incidentally, not all of the coffee beans picked here are considered good enough for Doka´s coffee label. When we asked the guide what happened to those beans, we were told Juan Valdez buys them. Just something else to think about… the web site for their coffee is dokaestate.com. If you want to order coffee online, get the peaberry – it´s great!
The animal rehabilitation at Zoo Ave was fantastic! It´s set in a natural jungle environment and there was everything there from extremely endangered species of monkeys and birds to ocelots, Quetzels (the Costa Rican national bird), crocodiles, cougars, wild pigs (essentially small jungle boars), loads of different types of parrots, owls and eagles, lots of turtles and tortoises and some spectacular created iguanas. We spent a long time just walking around looking up, like people who had just escaped from an asylum. It was fun to see a 6 foot long iguana that had escaped its cage and was happily sitting on the roof munching on fallen vegetation. Almost every plant in Costa Rica seems to produce mutant size flowers or fruit of some kind. You literally have to watch your head when you´re walking under the trees for fear of getting beaned by a guava.
Sarchi was fun to see for it´s arts and crafts, but we´ve made it a policy not to buy at the beginning of our trip, so we don´t have to carry stuff with us for weeks, and because you´re guaranteed you´ll find something you like as well or better along the way. Having said that, I did get the website for the amazing leather and wood rocking chairs they are famous for (I´m such an old git…) as we may order something from home – sure! The intricate painting on their ox carts was worth the trip to get a few pictures, and the view from the mountains down into the valley where San Jose sits was definitely worth it. Not to mention the amazing fresh strawberry gellatto – if you´re ever there, we highly recommend it.
Tomorrow we take off for Arenal Volcano, and hopefully a hike up it. If you ever find yourself in San Jose, look up our taxi driver Jose to take you around.
VSTG
Phone: (506) 363-0525
Office: (506) 433-6686
Email: info@viajesgarmendia.com
Web:www.viajesgarmendia.com
As usual, we are thinking about our families, our doggies, and our friends (especially those in Innsbruck right now!). Take care,
Noel & George
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