Onward, Ho!

From here we continued our trip to the surfer town of Jaco.  We had delicious tacos for dinner than walked to a bar for margaritas.  While enjoying our beverages, we saw cops trying to bust a couple gangsters in a stationary car – unsuccessfully because after minutes of searching they were unable to find any evidence.  Hey, at least the cops are patrolling the streets, right?  The next day we walked along the beach before heading back to San Jose.  The temperature was in the 90s, which is great after the cold weather in Dallas and San Francisco!

After settling down in San Jose, we made our way to the Jade Museum.  We passed by lovely churches and the national theatre on the way there.  Most exciting, in my opinion, was finding the flock of wild parrots!  So far, I have found the wild folks in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and now San Jose.  

Church in downtown San Jose

Wild parrots are in San Jose too!

National Theatre of San Jose

The Jade Museum boasts the largest collection of Pre-Columbian jade pieces in the world.  It was a very interesting collection of stone, jewelry, and vases.  My favorite was by far the erotic portion of the museum – fertility vases, penises and figurines holding their breasts.  Although, nothing rivals seeing Rasputin’s penis at the Erotic Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Love this one too

cute bowl

Check out the filed teeth! 

Fertility statue

Penises

Not sure what this bowl is used for

Rasputin's penis - St. Petersburg Erotic Museum, 2006

The next day, we took another driving tour out of the city in search of the Poas Volcano.  After more frustrating dead ends and confusing directions, we finally found our way up the mountain into the Poas Volcano National Park.  We were pressed for time because at about 10AM, the clouds from the forest billow down into the volcano crater, obscuring the view for tourists.  While in line for some coffee at the airport, I heard another tourist say that he didn’t see anything at all – too bad he doesn’t have someone like Nat cracking the whip to make sure we made our time deadline!  There were times he would basically be dragging me up that hill.  We made it though!  At the risk of breaking her hip, an older woman agreed to take our photo from the elevated pegs that surrounded the viewing points.

Poas Volcano

Picture from the Peg

This plant is commonly known as the Poor Man's Umbrella

We also hiked a bit further and found this beautiful laguna.  Although I think my highlight was the woman who was teasing a squirrel with a cracker – the squirrel started to climb up her leg causing her to scream and drop the cracker.  The squirrel grabbed in and ran back into the brush.  Serves her right for feeding the wildlife!

Lagoon