San José – Costa Rica’s capital city

Costa Rica – Our third country in Central America

Costa Rica is a remarkable country: it has no army. The country spends money on education and healthcare instead and it so it explains its high literacy rate (96%) and solid healthcare system.

So we arrived in San José full of curiosity. The city is not as charming as Santo Domingo’s old town or Havana’s run-down yet splendid city. It is probably because San Jose is a relatively young city and has very few historical buildings or quarters.

While doing what we always do first – walking around – we really felt a strong North American presence in the economy: KFC, McDonald, Burger-King, Subway and many other fast-food chains are present in every corner. That may attribute to the lack of personality of San José.

However, we felt that people were helpful, speaking good English, efficient, service-oriented and very friendly.

During our short stay in the city, we visited the National Museum (starting with a beautiful butterfly section where colorful butterflies are flying around you freely, with a nice breezy garden in the middle), enormous and lively Mercado Central selling from meat to coffee beans, vegetables to souvenirs). In the evening we visited an open-air traditional costa rican music concert in the National Theater garden. It was nice to see people enjoying dancing spontaneously.