To Panama and Back - San Jose

We have recently got back from our trip to Panama, which was pretty fun and as usual when traveling you come back with some stories and hopefully some good photos. We were hoping to catch a bus from Jaco to San Jose and then San Jose to Panama. We arrived in San Jose bright and early, but not early enough to catch the bus down to Panama so we spent the day and night in San Jose and made our way the next day. So our first stop was San Jose, which we were pretty gutted about because we have heard from pretty much everyone we met that it is a rough city, the people can be pretty dodgy and there is nothing to do in the nights. Luckily close buddy Matt Prata had recently been in San Jose and knew of some things to see. The first stop was the Museum of Costa Rican Art which was free and quite inspiring.





Afterward we ventured downtown to get a casado(rice, beans, meat...) and to see what was happening in the streets of San Jose. As we turned down this one street a giant mob of people appeared standing infront of this big gate and there was quite alot of commotion amongst the crowd. The first thing that came to mind was that there is going to be a riot, and then the gate began to open. We heard a giant roar that sounded like a million lions harmonizing and out came a fired up hillbilly driving a monster truck, I began questioning whether the rumors were true and if monster trucks are needed to control the riots here. But it turned out they were just showing the truck off to the crowd and everyone was having pictures around it.

Prata also insisted on revisiting this central square in the middle of downtown to have another look at this game he saw being played. We dont know the name of the game but we do however know the inventor and his name is Rafael. The second we showed up in the square without hesitation Rafael called us over and got us involved. I wont go into the rules because I didnt really understand them myself but Rafael has been playing this game for thirty years and his two amigos seemed to be ditching school to play so im guessing its pretty fun once you know the rules. Soon after partaking in this game we were being approached by multiple sketchy characters including this one young eighteen year old Nicaraguan boy who was missing most of his fingers and was saying that the other men were robbers so we gave the boy some cash and quickly left the scene.