San Jose!

After a scenic four hour drive over mountains, past oceans, and through jungles, we finally arrived in San Jose. San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, is a humongous city, divided into small “counties” sprawled over hillsides and houses haphazardly stacked up against cliffs. The whole city is surrounded by luscious green mountains, towering over the city, making the capital look more like Dr. Seuss's who-ville. Being in the presence of such overpowering monsters made me long for snow, fantasizing about the amazing skiing! The weather here is perfect, like spring in Colorado, and there aren't any mosquitos!

San Jose has everything. Its got the slums like practically any other city. I guess this area is fairly dangerous (according to my mom, which doesn't really mean much...) and as we drove through this part my brother rolled all of the windows up and locked the doors. He pointed to people and proceeded to tell me that they were all killers, which I find hard to believe, but maybe I'm just sheltered Boulder kid.

On the other side of the spectrum, were the houses with white picket fences and fancy new SUVs. As we entered the city, we were greeted by huge tourist resorts and shopping malls composed of entirely American stores. I am still at a loss to understand why someone would come to a foreign country just to stay in a resort the whole time, especially a resort without a beach, and then even if they do escape the monstrosity, they are instantly trapped by Taco Bells and Macy's.

The metropolis also has small markets, large apartment buildings, small parks like those of New York, and areas of severe poverty. Here, the houses were constructed by stacking spare scrap metal and rusty sheets of tin up against cliffs, somewhat resembling the gypsy caves in Spain. The 'houses” were stacked up on top of each other, how its kept from collapsing is far beyond me, and at the top it looked as if they had just thrown random scraps of metal on the roof to keep it from blowing away.

On Saturday we went to a huge farmers market. Tents of all different colors stretched on for what seemed like forever and the street was packed with people. Each tent was filled with different types of fruits and vegetables, some I had never even heard before.

Its giant!!!! I am standing like in the middle of the market...

Mamones! Strange little fruits that look bizarre but taste soo good! The first person to try one bust have either been really hungry or really crazy though... 

You can't really tell, but there is a baseball field behind those trees!  The first one I have seen  sense I've gotten here.