When the Sleep Inn San José Downtown was first built, there had been no new hotels built in the central downtown area for about thirteen years. The Sleep Inn brought new hotel, restaurant and entertainment services to central San José, but it hoped to seamlessly fit itself into a charming downtown area known for its gracious parks and large, old trees. The Sleep Inn builders made several design and decorating choices that have helped the hotel blend nicely with its older surroundings and earn praise from guests and city officials alike.

Before the Sleep Inn was built, the Escuela Metálica, one of San José’s oldest high schools, stood directly across the park from the hotel’s proposed site. The Escuela Metálica is one of the most unusual buildings in San José. As its name suggests, the outer skin of the building and its fine architectural details are made entirely of metal. The building has become an attractive downtown landmark, its greenish hue playing off the green of the surrounding trees. The building was manufactured in France and shipped in pieces to San José, where it was assembled. The Sleep Inn builders hoped to acknowledge the Escuela Metálica when they built the hotel. The outside color choice for the Sleep Inn is a similar, slightly modernized green—a respectful nod to the older Escuela Metálica.

A visitor to the pre-construction Sleep Inn site looking toward the Escuela Metálica would also see beautiful old trees lining narrow streets. When the Sleep Inn lobby walls went up, these trees were no longer visible. The Sleep Inn commissioned Denis Salas, a Costa Rican painter, to do some paintings for the hotel’s lobby walls. Denis Salas, who loved the old tree-lined streets, painted the very images that the pre-construction visitor would have seen on the unbuilt hotel site. The lobby now boasts a series of paintings that work almost like windows, providing views of the surrounding downtown area.

San José’s mayor and several prominent city officials have praised the Sleep Inn for modernizing the downtown area and renewing business while creatively acknowledging the area’s past.

When most people think of tropical fruit, they imagine ripeness—bright orange papayas, yellow pineapples, and deeply colored mangoes. Visitors to the tropics usually want their fruit sweet and juicy, not rock-hard and green. However, there is one Costa Rican fruit—mango—that is delicious long before it ripens.

Costa Ricans young and old love unripened mango. Schoolchildren climb mango trees and toss the green fruit down to their friends. Businesspeople eat green mango as a snack between meals.

Unlike a fully ripened mango, a green mango is very hard and has a thick skin. Its flesh is pale green and only slightly juicy. That juice, though, is wonderfully tart—the kind of tartness that pleasantly puckers lips. The seed of a green mango is white and waxy and resembles a very large bean.

Costa Ricans usually eat green mango the way Americans eat apples, biting at the firm flesh and eating all the skin. They avoid the seed, which is bitter. Some people sprinkle the mango with salt as they eat, because the salt plays nicely off the sourness of the fruit. Mango eaters with a little more time cut up the flesh of the fruit, squeeze it with lemon juice and sprinkle it with salt.

Green mango is delicious in all ways and is definitely something all Costa Rican visitors should try.

When Ernest Heminway went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War, he wrote about the country and its people from his own expatriate point of view. Hemingway’s identity as an American abroad colored his take on the politics of the country, its customs, and even his depiction of its language. Our collective view of Spain has forever been broadened by Hemingway’s experience there.

In much the same way, John Berendt forever changed Savannah, Georgia after the publication of his Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Berendt’s heartfelt descriptions of Savannah’s charm and history lured thousands of tourists to the once-sleepy Southern city. His vivid description of the eccentricity and self-reliance of Savannah’s people made readers feel as though they had actually met the characters in his book.

Although literary fame can take its toll on a country, this kind of fame can also add an interesting facet to the country’s image. Costa Rica has yet to meet its expatriate author.

from an interview with Shelby McAdams

This last impression might seem an empty platitude, were it not for its truth. The people of Costa Rica are, in fact, remarkably friendly, cheerful and happy. They are quick to make jokes, plan parties, laugh at themselves, and they are especially friendly to foreign tourists. Costa Rican good cheer probably stems from various sources.

Costa Rica is one of the few Latin American countries that does not have an army. There are no soldiers standing on street corners with machine guns or keeping a watchful eye over people in public areas. Costa Ricans are proud to say that their tax money supports schools and education, and not a standing army. The country has one of the highest literacy rates in Latin America, and Costa Ricans almost all share a lifelong love of learning. Costa Ricans like to say that their country is best represented by the happy march of uniformed schoolchildren to and from classes, rather than by the ominous march of a national army.

This lack of a military creates a sense of that is fully alive in the minds of most Costa Ricans. They like to think of their country as a union of gentle and peace-loving souls. Because Costa Ricans would rather get along peacefully than argue, the country has developed a reputation for good-natured joke- and story-telling. Costa Ricans enjoy making one another laugh and passing their time in good humor.

Family is of great importance to people of this country, and extended family members have traditionally lived close to one another and been very involved in each other’s lives. Everyone has cousins and aunts and uncles who are as close to them as friends. Because family gatherings tend to be large, almost every family occasion turns into a party. Costa Ricans love parties with their families, friends and fellow workers, and they throw parties at the least provocation. Everyone loves music and dancing, and social gatherings become boisterous and lively.

Fun and enjoyment are practically a tradition in Costa Rica, and visitors are right to note that the Costa Rican people are a cheerful bunch.

Born in the early part of the 1900s, Carlos Luis Fallas had little formal education. He spent much of his early life working in the banana plantations of the United Fruit Company near Limón, on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. He became involved in the labor struggles of the plantation workers and soon was an active member of the Communist party in Costa Rica. He later served as a Diputado, or Congressman, in Costa Rica’s national congress and took part in Costa Rica’s civil war of 1948.

Mamita Yunai describes the unfair labor treatment and grim conditions Carlos Luis Fallas witnessed firsthand on the plantations of the United Fruit Company. (“Yunai” is a latinized shortening of “United.”) This book was an early criticism of American involvement in Costa Rica’s economy and workforce.

In Marcos Ramírez, the eponymous hero is a young boy in 1920’s Costa Rica. More lighthearted and far less political than Mamita Yunai, Marcos Ramírez still makes an important literary and historical statement. The details of life and customs it describes are those of a pre-industrialized and pre-globalized Costa Rica that has now all but disappeared.

Before Fallas’ death in 1966, Marcos Ramírez won an award from the William Faulkner Foundation for the best Latin American novel, and Fallas won Costa Rica’s highly regarded Magón cultural award.

Costa Rica’s congress posthumously awarded Carlos Luis Fallas the country’s highest national honor, Benemérito de la Patria.

adapted from http://www.guiascostarica.com/myunai/calufa.htm

Oxcarts all looked relatively similar, and their traditional shape has since become an iconic Costa Rican design. Oxcarts had one axle, to which were attached large, round wheels. These wheels were flat and had no spokes. Two oxen usually pulled the cart, a heavy wooden yoke over their necks. Someone often walked in front of the cart, guiding the plodding oxen to their destination.

At first, oxcarts were plain and unpainted, their wood slowly weathering to a natural grayish brown. But the simple lines and utilitarian beauty of the oxcarts soon lent themselves to decoration and embellishment. Oxcart decoration became something of a national art form. Wheel-painting was particularly popular, and artisans decorated cart wheels with brilliant geometric patterns that radiated from the center of the wheel. Yokes also became a popular design element, and painters covered them in flowers and curlicues.

Now that Costa Rica’s transportation systems are fully modernized, oxcarts are almost nonexistent as transportation. Some rural farmers still use them, but oxcarts have now become mostly decorative. Restaurants and museums across the country hang hand-painted yokes and oxcart wheels on their walls. “Carretas” are the subject of many nostalgic historical paintings, and entire oxcarts stand in the lobbies of theaters and art galleries nationwide.

But these beautiful pieces of art once put in generations of hard work.

The Sleep Inn is doing its part to revive the green areas in the city and to protect the environment in general. In honor of its third anniversary, the Sleep Inn recently planted several trees around the edge of its property. These trees are of two types, selected by the city for their appropriateness to the urban climate and for their attractiveness to birds and other animals. The first type of tree produces a fruit that birds enjoy, and the other attracts hummingbirds when in full flower. The plan, according to hotel manager Horlando Salas, is to help restore San José’s natural beauty and to draw birds and other animals back into the center of the city.

The new trees are only part of the Sleep Inn’s overall effort to protect the environment. The hotel is currently working with the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) to qualify for a certificate in environmental sustainability. To that end, the hotel has implemented energy-saving and recycling programs in both the hotel and casino buildings. Each hotel department has been working toward more efficient use of natural resources and more environmentally sound cleaning and waste-management practices.

Mr. Salas hopes that local businesses will work together with the Sleep Inn to protect and restore San José’s natural beauty.

City leaders and urban architects worried about this recent downturn and created various incentives to encourage both businesspeople and homeowners to return to the city. They also recommended several city beautification projects and urban improvements. The municipality of San José formed the Committee for the Regeneration and Repopulation of San José. Following the precepts of the Committee, the Institute of Tropical Architecture came up with a plan, San José Posible, to address the architectural, ecological and aesthetic issues facing the “new” San José.

As part of the San José Posible plan, the Institute of Tropical Architecture proposed closing off several of San José’s congested streets to form outdoor pedestrian areas. The city followed the Institute’s suggestion and closed traffic in areas that would then become city pedestrian zones. The first such zone met with great success; its communal outdoor space is free of traffic noise and vehicular congestion and is a pleasant place for pedestrians to stroll.

The Institute also hopes to promote and encourage the construction of multi-use buildings that incorporate commercial space, parking, residential units and plenty of outdoor garden space. San José Posible hearkens back to a time in San José’s history when the city streets were tree-lined and quiet, and businesses and residences coexisted in urban tranquility.

The Sleep Inn San José Downtown has been a leader among the businesses hoping to restore and reinvigorate San José. When the Sleep Inn was first built, there had been no new hotel in the central downtown area for fourteen years. The mayor of San José praised the Sleep Inn for its strong show of faith in the economic future of the city. Recently, the Sleep Inn has undertaken several projects to contribute to the beautification and improvement of the downtown area.

Frescos are appealing, because restaurants rarely make them from pre-packaged concentrates or mixes of any kind. Instead, these drinks usually contain huge amounts of the freshest tropical fruit. Although almost any flavor of fresco is delicious–and a wonderful opportunity to try delicious fruits–one of the most unusual and tasty fresco flavors is cás.

A small, yellowish tropical fruit that grows on a tree, cás is very sour. Costa Ricans never eat it off the tree. Instead, they extract the pulp for a terrific juice.

Fresco de cás en agua is like a tropical lemonade. Cás drinks are cool and pleasantly tart with enough pulp to make them slightly frothy. They are the ideal accompaniment to a plate of rice and beans or a nice ceviche. Cás is refreshing on a hot day and is definitely the best of Costa Rica’s wide array of tropical drinks.

The Magnolia Restaurant in the Casino Club Colonial serves a delicious selection of frescos naturales.

The three mountains in the center of the escudo represent the three mountain ranges, or cordilleras, that run through the country–the Cordillera Central, the Cordillera de Talamanca and the Cordillera de Guanacaste. Some say that the peaks represent volcanoes found along each of the mountain ranges, and the escudo recently has been altered so that smoke now emerges from the mountain peaks.

The green at the base of the mountains represents the fertile soil and rich vegetation of Costa Rica’s Central Valley.

The blue water in front of and behind the mountains alludes to Costa Rica’s Pacific and Atlantic coastlines, while the ships at sea indicate both Costa Rica’s nautical history and the fact that the country’s ports are free and open.

The seven stars in an arc above the mountains represent Costa Rica’s seven provinces—San José, Cartago, Alajuela, Heredia, Puntarenas, Guanacaste and Limón.

The rising sun refers to the newness of the country when it first adopted the escudo and to hope for its prosperous future.

The golden border represents Costa Rican coffee—the golden bean, or grano de oro.