San Jose Costa Rica 24

We arrived in Costa Rica a couple of days before our tour was to start.
We spent the first day "exploring" San Jose to get a feel of the city.
Wandering around we saw lots of crafts for sale.

These workers were swinging back and forth scraping and cleaning this wall.
Not quite Cirque du Soleil but close.
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We asked a random local resident where was a good place to get lunch and he told us about Nuestra Tierra.

Clearly intended for the tourist trade with great food and live entertainment.
The text translates: Pure Life! Our Land Restaurant Authentic Costa Rican food
We were joined with friends we had traveled with before.
Left to right: Jim, Alan, Nancy, Jan, David, and Linda.

Here are a couple of our delicious seafood dinners.
The octopus was very tender.

Live entertainment while we were there.
I would call the tall instrument a washtub bass but that wouldn't be entirely accurate.
What would you call it?

On a prior visit we had visited the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum and wanted to see it again.
It is located under a plaza in the center of the city.

In the historical section was this representation of preparation for medical treatment with herbs laid out.

Clay figurines

Another section had Pre-Columbian gold.

And another had money that has been used in Costa Rica including coffee boletos.
These often had the names of the coffee growers, haciendas or geographical location and the value they represent, which can be given in measures of volume for harvesting coffee (baskets, crates, measures) or equivalent to the national coin (reales, pesos, centavos, colones, centimos).

The forms and materials of boletos were varied and changed with the passage of time, the most widely used being bronze, brass, aluminum, nickel, lead, copper, plastic, Bakelite, cardboard and paper mainly.
In this way, boletos came to be a type of private coin that circulated alongside the official coin.

Have you ever wondered why you put money in a "Piggy Bank"?
There was a display in the museum explaining.
The heading says "The origin of piggy banks in the shape of little pigs (chanchitos)"

It seems to be partly a translation mistake or possibly a bad pun, here is the translation of the rest of the text to fully explain.
"There is no clarity about its origin and therefore there are several explanations in this regard. One points out that they originated from a confusion of names since during the Middle Ages in Eastern Europe a cheap material similar to orange clay was used to make containers and store money, which in English was known as "pygg ", and the vessels that were made with it were known as "pygg jars" (pygg jars or jars, in English). The similarity between the words "pygg" and "pig" (pig in English) would have given rise to confusion, which is why, in the 19th century, English potters would begin to produce piggy banks in the shape of a pig due to this confusion of the language."

Next stop the Jade Museum a couple of blocks away.

Though it was called the Jade Museum it had artifacts of many different materials.
These are granite grain grinding plates and a pestle in the shape of a stirrup.

Some of the fanciful bowls and figures on display.

Three footed bowls were a lot more stable on irregular surfaces which were probably common even in wealthy homes.

This finally is Jade.
Because Jade is such a hard fine grained mineral it is ground and polished to shape it rather than being carved.
That makes the horns, ears, and tail on this figure all the more impressive.

Beads, rings, and figures.

The next day as we were leaving San Jose we passed this statue honoring Juan Santamaría Rodríguez.
He was a drummer in the Costa Rican army, officially recognized as a national hero for his actions in 1856.
He died in the battle carrying a torch he used to light the enemy stronghold on fire, securing a victory for Costa Rica against American mercenary William Walker and his forces.