San Jose - Costa Rica

I had a few days to spend in San Jose.  I'm not generally a fan of cities, I get a lot more excited about wild animals and scenery than buildings and museums, that said I spent a pleasant and relaxing time there, with a moderate amount of (Poke-)walking around.

The first thing to grab my attention was a large Death-star looking metal ball construction in the plaza outside the National Museum. Inside the metal sphere was a stone sphere. The little plaque was in Spanish, and I couldn't understand it, so Google and Wikipedia to the rescue.  It certainly looked cool!

National Museum itself used to be the headquarters of the Costa Rican army. When the army was disbanded, the building was given over to be a museum as a symbolic change from old to new. The building is still very obviously a fort, complete with what I guess are bullet holes on some of the towers.

Inside the museum was a butterfly farm with, as far as I could see, no butterflies at all.  They were doing renovations, and maybe they all escaped.

They did have what must be one of the world's oldest graters, which quite impressed me. Small chips of sharp stone set with hard resin into wood.  Used for grating cassava I think.

The other architecture of note included the Metal School. Yes it's actually made of 1000 tons of metal. I didn't find out why.

A statue collection that I thought looked nice

And Our Lady of the Propeller.

I also found a lovely big public park with a cute brown squirrel, some pretty water flowers, tiny doves and ugly ducks.

Blue Ground Dove

Black Bellied Whistling Duck?

Muscovy Duck

I also went to the Gold Museum (which is an upside down pyramid, underground beneath one of the central plazas). This had a fair variety of pottery and gold artifacts.  There are a lot of pictures so I left this to the end! The gold includes lots of frogs, people, and wildlife including crabs, lobster catfish and bats!

This jug had handles of beheaded people.