Continued from San Jose Day 2 Part 2.

Breakfast by RL.

Mangosteen, mangos, starfruit, and eggs. Yum.

We also got some rambutan to eat later.

Wish we could find mangosteen all the time in Austin at a reasonable price.

Giant mangos, and so so sooo sweet.

The giant avocado we got at the grocery store. It’s not quite ripe yet, so we’ll cut it up tomorrow.

The plan today is to head to the zoo this morning. It’s just a very short 5 minutes walk from our apartment.

Nice murals on this house, and also a nice brand new Range Rover in the garage. This is a nice neighborhood indeed.

And we got to the zoo only to find it completely closed. Not just closed, it looks abandoned…WTF.

This is what it says on Google Maps for the zoo hours. The last country I visited where the hours were so inaccurate was probably India over a decade ago. The inaccurate opening dates and hours I didn’t expect to encounter so much here in San Jose. Also, we noticed that a lot of restaurants open for lunch at noon instead of at 11am.

Well, the zoo is closed, that kind of ruined our whole plan for the day. Stress, a little panic, let’s see what we shall do instead.

We know the zoo isn’t open today, but it may be open tomorrow? I messaged my airbnb host to see if she can provide more information regarding the zoo opening hours. We were supposed to head out of town in our car to see Poas volcano tomorrow. In fact, I bought tickets for it just this morning, timed nonrefundable tickets for $50. We decided to head back to our apartment and instead rebook the timed tickets for Poas volcano for later today instead. We’ll just eat the price of the tickets for tomorrow because this will still offer us a chance to visit the zoo if it’s open tomorrow.

Came back to our apartment to book timed entry tickets for the Poas volcano and I also double checked the zoo’s website. Yup, says they are open daily. I called the number but no one picked up. I guess I’ll wait to find out from the airbnb host whenever she messages me back on what the deal is with the zoo.

Get in the car and head out of San Jose. It’ll be about an hour and a half drive, plus lunch.

Can’t get out of San Jose without some traffic jam.

The jam is for a toll booth, but both times we’ve driven through it, they are just lifting the gates and letting everyone by. Why, I have no idea.

One of the small town square that we pass through with playground and lots of tree shade.

That’s quite the retaining wall.

It took a while to click, but we finally realized that we are driving all around lots of coffee plantations up here in the mountains.

Some random motorcyclist pulling off a long wheelie going up the hill. Kinda cool I guess…No, kids, don’t think about riding a motorcycle.

Coffee, and more coffee.

Lunch spot.

Maybe still slightly carsick despite having dramamine?

It’s much cooler up here in the mountains, they wanted to put their raincoats on as jackets.

Right after the server who brought me my Imperial, he said that I should try Pilsen, the other Costa Rican beer. He said that Imperial is the worst…thanks for telling me that right as I’m about to drink it…He also told us that we are lucky to have no raining weather right now since it’s the rainy season. I told him we haven’t visited Poas volcano yet, so we’ll see about that. Unfortunately, the weather did end up taking a turn for the worse.

This was very good. Costa Rican Patacones. Basically fried smooshed plantains as your chips.

Add salsa, avocado, black bean paste. super delicious.

Steak covered in cheese, yes please.

A lemon pie to share for after lunch treat.

Let’s get going, we’ve got a timed entry to see the volcano.

The parking lot, where they made everyone park by reversing in. Is this so that in case there’s an explosion we can all get out faster? When we were paying for our parking fees, with our windows open, we could smell the strong sulphur gas smell from the volcano. Cool.

To be continued at San Jose Day 3 Part 2.