where the streets have no name

wtf, costa rica? get some street signs. no one knows where they are or where they're going. oh, wait, no... they're going 800 meters south of the grocery store down the hill around the corner to the right. i asked a women in san jose if she could show me where on the map her store was so mom and i could figure out where we were. she couldn't. i asked a security guard if he knew which way avenida 4 was. he didn't. costa rica, in general, doesn't really have signs, but in san jose? i don't know.

anyways, we made the "quick," 3-hour jaunt from manuel antonio up to san jose to spend our last 36 hours walking around the plazas and doing some sight seeing. san jose has a completely different feel from the rest of costa rica- big city, international feeling. 37 hours would have been too much; we spent the perfect amount of time there.

we started out the day taking a taxi to a butterfly garden where we watched a little video on the mind-blowing journey from egg to butterfly and walked around the garden. we some how made it down to the city center without a glitch and went to the plaza de cultura to watch some street performers and feed the pigeons 8 bags of corn (the smallest bill we had was 1,000 colones- $2). made for a nice picture. as we walked around, we were trying to head in the direction of a gallery. see picture 29 to see how that turned out. after a pointless 15-minute cab ride that literally took us back to where we started, we went to the grand hotel for lunch and had some of costa rica's famous pop's ice cream.

we spent the afternoon at the gold museum learning about costa rican history, culture and currency. sparked my interest to go back to school and study anthropology. we did some shopping for gifts in the rain, then had tickets to see the costa rican youth philharmonic orchestra play at the teatro nacional. the theater was beautiful and the orchestra was incredible. mom has her master's in performing arts and she said it was one of the best performances she has ever seen.

i get a headache thinking about how i'm going to pack everything into my backpack and 2 carry ons. pura vida.