Tour of San Jose and move to Cachi

Day 33

Tour of San Jose and move to Cachi

On Sunday, January 13 we loaded up all our earthly possessions and some of the groceries we had accumulated in Richard's car and headed out for our new abode.  Richard had planned some tour stops along the way.  Our first stop was the Art Museum of Costa Rica.  It was formerly the old airport.

The building was beautiful and was adjacent to a huge park (we thought probably made from the old runways). 

Our favorite piece of work was The Salon Dorado room.  It is a bronze relief of the history of Costa Rica all around the walls of the old Diplomat's Lounge in the airport.

Next we headed for the Gold Museum in  the cultural district of San Jose.  They had a large collection of pre-columbian gold and a lot of information about the history of the gold art.

They also had a special exhibit of pre-columbian jungle feline art.  We really liked the cat grinding stone.  They used these to grind corn for ceremonies. 

Our next stop was across the plaza to the Teatro Nacional. 

The theater is considered the finest historic building in San Jose.  It was conceived in 1890 when a spanish-born artist skipped Costa Rica while on a Central American tour due to the lack of a suitable venue.  This spurred the ruling coffee barons to levy a tax on coffee exports to fund the building of a grand theater.  The building was modeled after the Paris Opera House and completed in 1897.

The auditorium is has three floors

The stage can be lowered and raised.

The foyer is the most impressive part.  A double staircase with gold-gilt banisters leads to it.

The foyer is full of marble, crystals and gold embellishments.  The floor is a parquet made of 10 species of hardwood. 

There are beautiful murals on the ceiling depicting Costa Rican life.

Then it was on to Cartago.  There is a huge cathedral in Cartago, but we didn't stop since we were there during mass and there was no parking anywhere near it.  We definately want to go back to see it.  We did stop at the ruins of the Iglesia de la Parroquia originally built in 1575.

The church was destroyed five times by earthquakes.  They have made a nice park around the ruins.  It must have a haunted legend.

We had a fabulous day touring with Richard.  He has been such a great host and we really enjoyed our time in his apartment. 

Richard and Eric

We arrived at the village of Penas Blancas outside of Cachi mid-afternoon.  Then we started the climb up to Finca Good Life where we are to stay for the next 6 weeks.  The climb was so steep that Richard's car couldn't make it all the way up.  We backed down once and tried again but to no avail.  Eric and I got out of the car about half way up the mountain and started walking.  Oh my, it was steep and hard to walk.  The road was concrete and we couldn't imagine how they managed to pour it on that steep incline.  We found out later it was all done by hand. 

We were rescued part of the way up by Ray in his 4-wheel drive mule and Richard finally made it all the way to the top with his lighter load.  We were greated by a magnificent view of the surrounding mountains.  This is our view to the north looking over the farmland in the valley. 

Since we are on the very top of a saddle between two mountains.  We have a great view in two directions.  This is our view to the south. 

In the area where you can see a bit of bare rock there are usually several waterfalls coming all the way down.  It has been an unusually dry year and the waterfalls dried up a few weeks ago.  Looking over at the mountain looks just like the opening scene of Jurassic Park (which was filmed in a different location in Costa Rica). 

Ray and Michele that run Finca (farm or estate) Good Life have several goats, chickens, geese, dogs and a cat.  We are looking forward to getting to know them.