Our plans for today are to laze around on the ship, then wander off around 10ish to do a self-guided walking tour of Puntarenas. We’ve done most of the tours here – including the coffee plantation last year with the idiot Villagers – so we figure, we’ll just stay in town. I’ve managed to find a bunch of stuff to explore and mapped out a round about loop that includes one of the best places to get cerviche. Sounds like a plan.
We hit the gym, get cleaned up, hang out on the balcony watching the tours leave, watching the independent people walk all the way down the long pier, disappear for 10 or 15 minutes then walk back to the ship. We just know they are saying “there’s nothing here, why do they even come here?” It is always the same in every port! We finally make our way out around 10, and start our walk, passing the Puntarenas letters….
…heading toward the House of Culture. Originally the police headquarters and jail in the late 19th century, it is designed in that neo-classical style that is so prevalent here – the adobe like exterior and arched wooden windows. Today it is a museum and exhibition hall, which sounds like a good place to start our touring.
The streets are pretty empty, sort of gritty, and not especially picturesque. But, its a working town, not a tourist destination, at least not international tourists. It is definitely a Costa Rican tourist destination, with the beautiful beaches and lots of guest houses available for rent. We make it to the House of Culture without a problem (the whole island is laid out on a grid so it is really easy to navigate around) and completely enjoy the pedestrian street outside with all the fantastic sculptures, one of which looks just like the small infinity iron sculpture we bought in Bulgaria. Inside, the exhibits are minimal, but nice. I particularly like some of the paintings, and the sculptures are cool – or frightening, depending upon how you feel about crocodiles! Mostly though, it is the architecture that is the exhibition – the open rooms around a large courtyard that currently has a big stage and bleacher seats for theatrical presentations. Pretty interesting.
Next up on our tour is the Catedral del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus which is is literally around the corner. it is a beautiful stone cathedral, built from local rock in 1905, replacing an original wooden church (from the mid 1800s) that burned down. Inside there are 3 naves and 2 crosses, plus some gorgeous wood and stained glass windows. From what we’ve read, every material used was local – or at least Costa Rican, and it faces east, to face the “townspeople.”
From here we continue toward to the other side of the island, passing Victory Park, which is not at all what I thought it would be from the description. It is supposed to be a tribute to the Army that fought in the 1800s, but it is just a scrappy little bit of green in the middle of the city with park benches and some children’s area. Oh well. But, we’re close to the grocery store here, so we wander in search of what is called the Mega Super store. It takes us a while, but we finally find it, and it isn’t really that Mega. Again, there’s not much in the way of snacks that we want here, and even though we’re dying to buy coffee….no! It’s the hardest thing to walk out of there without bags and bags of it.
But walk out we do, and head toward Casa Fait, supposedly the most beautiful building in Puntarenas. It is a stunning house, built by an Italian immigrant in 1925, with Victorian and Art Nouveau influences, wrought iron railings and galvanized iron roof. Located on a corner across from the weird Victoria Park, it is a really pretty, if incongruous sight – this beautiful white building juxtaposed against more traditional Costa Rican architecture.
Pushing on, we walk the back streets (quite literally the back street – Avenue 3, the street closest to the water on this far side of the island) toward the Municipal Palace. The street is a tad sketchy here – this stretch is fairly industrial and marine focused since the working dock is over here. We meet some fellow cruise passengers who are looking for the municipal market – to which we direct them (it is in the opposite direction of where we are headed and we had decided to ditch it since we certainly weren’t in the market for any fresh produce or meat) – then continue on our journey. We did find one of the restaurants I had researched, El Shrimp Shack, but after perusing the menu (it was super expensive!) we decided to keep going. It is early still, and we have a couple of other restaurants picked out further along our route.
A few blocks on and the Municipal Palace comes into view. It is no longer in use, and completely fenced off, but you can still see it’s ungainly form rising above the rest of the streetscape. It is by far the most unusual building you are ever to see, especially because of the surrounding typical Spanish-Mexican architecture. It is simply, in a word, bizarre! Designed by Jorge Bertheau to replace the original city hall which burned down, it was built in the 70’s and is supposedly an inverted cross (very hard to see from the angles you can get walking around) built in pyramid shape with bizarre cylinders in each corner. Four stories high, it is the tallest building in the city – and yes, the ugliest. Weird!
The Municipal Palace is situation right next to the Mora and Canas Park, the largest park in the city, dedicated to two National Campaign heroes who were executed here in 1860. Once again, it is not what I expected. I guess “park” conjures up a nice grassy area with trees and playgrounds. This mostly deserted had nothing but burnt out grass, gravel, a few scraggly trees, a couple benches here and there and a dilapidated playground area. The only thing of interest was the art deco water tower at the far end of the park.
We’re now onto Avenue 1 heading away from the central downtown area in search of our lunch spot. There was a restaurant allegedly right on the corner of the park and Avenue 1 I wanted to check out, but we never found it. So we marched on through the residential area of El Carmen, though once again, deserted streets but this time lined with homes and some tiny shops. As we are nearing Kaite Blanco, we run into an apparent ex-pat who talks to us in this English-Spanish patois which is really fun to try to translate. He is an old hippie-looking dude, obviously a fisherman, and is telling us about a big catch a boat has made, and we can go see it right at the pier – which is at the end of the street where the restaurant is located. Ok, well, thanks, maybe we will, but as we turn the corner and get closer to the pier, we see it is a commercial fishing pier with tons of fencing and people around and we’re not quite sure how cool it would be to just walk in. So we turn our attention to Kaite Blanco, which is literally at the entrance to the pier. And it looks totally abandoned! Bummer! Everything I read said they were open at 11am, and open on Monday. After casing the joint, in all honesty, even if it were open, we probably wouldn’t eat there. We have no problem eating on the street, but this was a little, how shall I say it, more basic than we would prefer.
No problem though, we have back up, Kaite Negro. Unfortunately everything I read said that Kaite Negro was right next door to Kaite Blanco, but on the maps it is actually over on the “Paseo de Turistas.” So, that is where we head, its is in the direction we need to go to circle back to the ship anyway, so why not? Fifteen minutes later, we walk through the open gates of Kaite Negro, right where Google Maps said it would be on the tourist promenade across form the water. It is a huge open air space, with cool wood carved chairs and a bouncy/trampoline looking netted cage thing outside in a sandy garden type area, oh, and not another soul in sight.
But, they are open. The owner? Waiter? Manager? Some guy, comes out and gives us menus and we settle in for a couple of Imperial beers and to great servings of Cerviche – one mixed and one straight up fish, served with 2 crispy fried pupusas along side. Totally Yummy – and a great atmosphere to boot.
From here it is a 15 or 20 minute walk back to the ship pier. There are some murals I have tagged for viewing, but, eh, we’re sort of not in the mood now so we just wander down the seafront promenade watching the people (finally! people!) go by. It is still really early though – it is barely noon, so we decide to lollygag a bit by stopping at one of the little kiosk-like bars on the beachfront. We chose Perla del Pacifico for no other reason that it was there when we decided to stop. It is a cute little beachy place – which serves food too, in huge portions (we watched plate after enormous plate come out of the little kitchen behind a curtain) – but we’re here for the beers. And beers we get, 3 to split for a special price. A great dive type joint to while away the time and watch the world go by.
And that concludes our nice little do nothing wandering day in Puntarenas. We’re back on the ship a little after 1 to while away the day, getting ready for a day at sea and then the Canal!
Andiamo 