San Jose

We arrived in San Jose and was met with the classic Central American organisation, a 2 hour queue to get through immigration, nearly as long as the flight itself 😔 definitely the worst we have had so far.

The town of San Jose is small and functional, at only 320,000 population it feels very different coming from the 5th largest. Although it lacks the colour and charm of Mexico City it makes up for it with some amazing museums. Unrelated to the town, things went slightly down here for us, Armelles phone mysteriously stopped working, definitely nothing to do with the charger that James dropped on it 🫣 and a dubious charge appeared on her card so that had to be blocked and cancelled.

After a half day of admin and finding out Costa Ricans don't use Google Phones we managed to get Armelle a new device so she can WhatsApp you all again, and we finally made it to some amazing Museums. First up was the Jade Museum where we learnt how jade was shaped and used as a way to tell the person's rank in the society pre-Columbian.

It's the raining season here so the next day we hit the other two big museums the Museum of Gold and coins. Again this museum focuses on the pre-Columbian time, and even if no big civilisation like the Maya existed in the zone of Costa Rica, the population was definitely influenced by maya and had trades with them. We could see similarity in the way they were living and the importance they gave to animals and what they symbolised.

Finally we made it to the National Museum, in a nice yellow building. Again it started with the pre-Columbian history but this time went all the way to today, even the pandemic was included! It was interesting to learn about how Costa Rica was constructed after their independence in 1825 from the Spanish and how they managed to create a country that seems very good to live in! Can you guess what's the top product that Costa Rica exports?

After a less than auspicious start to Costa Rica, San José definitely left a positive impression.Read more