Day 8: San José city tour, and to the ship

Today we took a whirlwind bus tour of San José and environs; unfortunately, it was also the day that my flu hit in full force.

We spent a good bit of time driving around various neighborhoods, eventually stopping at a jewelry store-cum-museum (actually much more store than museum). Our first major stop, though, was the National Theatre. This was erected when a noted 19th-century operatic diva snubbed Costa Rica for not having a suitable venue for her. Rather than taking this lying down, the good citizens raised the money themselves and built this very ornate facility.

Our second stop was the National Museum, a former fortress that now held exhibits and items covering the history and prehistory of the country. (With the flu hitting me, however, all I wanted to do was lie down and take a nap.)

We had lunch at INBioparque, then took a tour of the grounds, which attempted to recreate the various forest ecosystems seen throughout Costa Rica.

Leaving INBioparque, we took a return trip on my second-least favorite road in the country, Route 3 over the mountains, where we'd almost gotten killed the last time we tried it. We arrived at our ship just before dinner time and settled in there for the evening, getting a welcoming lecture and dinner from our guides and the ship's crew. (And I got a visit from the ship's doctor, who gave me some pills to provide symptomatic relief for my flu - with those in hand, I largely managed to cope for the rest of the trip, though I might have taken some of the more ambitious hikes had I been healthier.)

The front of the National Theater.

I thought it was really great that there was a little string group rehearsing in one of these historic rooms. (It really is a working theater still: when we were in the main auditorium, there were a number of people hard at work setting up the stage.)

One corner of the National Museum - not hard to tell that it was once a fort.

Art past and present: a prehistoric carved stone ball (no one knows why) and a more recent and highly decorated oxcart - these are common lawn decorations in Costa Rica.

A better look at the oxcart.

Yet another gorgeous view, this one from the museum.

INBioparque guide explaining about a flower with a long internal tube that insects crawl down.

A motmot (we think).

The view from INBioparque.

A very mellow INBioparque iguana - I'm practically standing on it!

Tina thinks this is a variegated squirrel. Not too exciting, but since she specialized in mammalogy, we got excited whenever we saw a mammal.

I liked the metal sculptures of various critters that they had at INBioparque.

We stopped at the Rio Tárcoles bridge again for the benefit of the recent arrivals. Unfortunately, the crocs weren't nearly as much in evidence as they'd been when we'd previously been there. However, I did get this nice panoramic view with the fading light.