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For those of you soda pop connoisseurs you would like
it here. When you order a pop in a restaurant it is
served in an original glass bottle with a glass of
ice.I haven't seen Coke, Canada Dry, or Fanta pop bottles
since I was a kid. Pretty cool. Also if there are some
hard to find flavours you yearn for they got them
here. Fresca (yes, I thought of you Ed) and Squirt are
particularly popular and are available in abundance at
grocery stores, restaurants, and convenience
stores. They also have a pop called Mirinda, I think
it's Fanta with the name changed for the Tico market.
If you don't care for pop there is a large selection
of fruit juices, many in flavours I have never heard
of before. Like cas, I'm told it's a bitter
yellow/green fruit that may only be available in Costa
Rica, combined with sugar and water the flavour is very
refreshingand light. It's become one of my favourites
along withmora (raspberry) juice.
As I have mentioned before there is a plethora of fast food places to choose from when you need a little taste of home. I neglected to mention that they deliver. Yes, you can get your Big Mac or Whopper delivered right to your office or home. The delivery people ride motorcycles with small plastic boxes on the back for storing food. The most entertaining are the ones from Campero, there is a plastic chicken mounted on top of the box so it looks like there is a passenger behind the rider. For the ladies we have a wide assortment of dancing men. Latin American men, Ticos in particular, enjoy dancing. Sorry, did I say enjoy? I meant love. I have been out on the town a couple times with some friends and have observed that many men actually come up and ask the girls to dance. Even stranger, they seem the actually enjoy the dancing. I have never seen so many swaying male hips in my life, including the one time I went to a male dance review (tactful way of saying male strip show) in Canada. I am told many parents start teaching their children to dance before they even learn to walk. There is a very efficient sewer and drainage system here. In addition to draining away all the rain the deep gutters, some up to 30 cm in depth, they clear away debris thrown into the streets. You only have to be careful when crossing the street during a rainfall as some of these turn into mini rivers and can be tricky to cross. Also if the rats have trouble negotiating the sewer system (it probably resembles the road system) and end up in your toilet (his name was Bob), simply flush said toilet so the little guy can get back to where it made a wrong turn. Xmas is starting here already, I guess that since they don't have those other pesky holidays like Thanksgiving they can start stocking the stores now. I stopped in Universal to get some envelopes and came across a huge assortment of trees (yes, they have plastic pine trees here, no real ones), decorations, toys, toys and more toys. This is the middle of September, 3, count 'em, 3 months before the holiday. I DID believe my co-workers when they said the country sort of shuts down during the Xmas holidays, but I didn't really expect thiskind of dedication for one day of the year. Apparently they do celebrate Hallowe'en, although I gather it has lost some popularity as parents don't like to take their children out at night and the Catholic church frowns on non-christian holidays. Museo Banco National/Museo del Oro: The first part of the Gold museum is a display showing the Coffey tokens. In the 1850's actual money was scarce and in too large a denomination for the Coffey plantation owners to use to pay their workers. So they issued tokens for each bag, bushel, or barrel (each plantation had their own units of measurement). These tokens could be used by the workers to exchange for goods in the local stores that had an arrangement with the plantation. It was beneficial for both in that the plantation often owned the store as well and made profit on the Coffey and the goods. The workers were able to be paid more often (instead of having to wait until they had made enough to be paid in a large denomination) and were able to purchase things locally without having to travel long distances. It's interesting that some of the tokens look like coins, minted with pictures and differing values, while some simply had the initials of the plantation owner stamped into them. Some of the newertokens were even made from plastic or resin. The second part of the museum covered the history of Costa Rican coinage. Obviously the original money was Spanish. Later with the different governments there emerged different coins, including coinage made for special occasions that was thrown to the people during parades. The museum has one of the only 3 coins left that minted by the first treasury of Costa Rica. It's very small. The next part was an art gallery that mostly covered modern Tico art. It was everything from oil, watercolour and fabric paintings to small stone and wood statuary. There was one truly humongous disk hanging in a corner, I swear that it was pulsing or swinging all the time (but when I looked at the side it wasn't moving, very cool). The last, and main part of the museum was the PreColombian gold display. Wow, was there a lot of gold. I expected to see large pieces with simple design, boy was I wrong. Most of the pieces are small, used for jewelry and extremely ornate. Most of the pieces were representations of birds, and many others of differnet native animals. There were gold specialists that made the pieces using a variety of techniques including the lost wax technique. I didn't know what it was either until I read the displays. They would make an model, complete with all the detail, in dark beeswax. Then gently wrap it in clay, must have been very soft or even almost liquid, with air vents. Then they put the clay in an oven to harden, during which the wax melted and drained out the air vents. They then poured molten gold into the mold and broke it open when it hardened. They even had organic acids (in some tree saps) to use for finishing and polishing. Now what took you 3 minutes to read took me almost 3 hours to look at. It was worth the time though. Next I am thinking of going to the Jade museum, Yes, there is pattern here, precious natural materials that have been developed by man. I guess eventually I will go to a cultural museum, but I am indulging myself at present. |
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