2015 - Rainforest Revisit -Part Seven - Jade Museum

August 13th- I had an idea that I could print out stuff from FindAGrave at the visitor's center. So I did that, and while I was there, I looked up the serpentarium again and it said that it wasn't open except Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So we couldn't go there today and that made things simpler. (assuming that the website was up-to-date).

So today we would go to the Jade Museum. In 2014, a NEW building was been built for this museum which covers the life in Costa Rica from 500 B.C. to 900 A.D. Not just jade but other aspects of life. This museum might be best visited before the Gold Museum which starts at about 900 A.D..

The Jade Museum website said it opened at 8:30, Mario came at 8:30 as promised, and drove .... to a place that didn't look like the Jade Museum. Turned out it was the place where the Jade Museum had been. So we went to the new Jade Museum, and I took the scooter up to the door

- new hours..... it does not open until 10:00. All the websites (as of 2015) still had the information (address, hours,admission) of the old museum. The current museum hours are 10 to 5 every day

So - I decided we should go to Obrero Cemetery while we were waiting for the Jade Museum to open. Obrero apparently means Worker, and it was next to the big General Cemetery for all the big wigs. Mario backed into the gate. Bob and Mario got out the scooter (Mario said just to put the back of the seat down and not to fold it up - it went OK in the back of his van). I started out down the central aisle taking photos and Bob apparently misunderstood or wasn't thinking because he did the same. Then when we met up, he decided to do some side areas that I couldn't get to. I got back to the gate, and we couldn't find him. He was wearing a dark plaid shirt and I thought he was wearing red. But eventually he came back We spent about a hour there and took 290 photos

Obrero Cemetery gate with watchman

Main path inside the cemetery

Graves in Cementerio Obrero

Graves in Obrero Cemetery

Back to the Jade Museum.

Logo for the museum

This is a very fancy and very well done museum which has five floors. The admission was $15.00 each, but the girl looked at me on the scooter and said "I will only charge you $5.00 each". Maybe there is a discount for old people.Or maybe we looked particularly poor.

looking down to the entrance

looking up

There were six "Halls" to visit.
1) Threshold - ground floor - level 1. This has the jade item which is the museum logo

Jade

I tried the face painting yourself to look like a shaman (you took a photo of yourself and used the computer to do the painting - not actual paint) but I was pretty bad at it.

interactive face painting book

2) The Jade - level 2. This area shows where Jade comes from (no natural jade in Costa Rica) and how it is prepared and used.

Origins of Jade - map in the center of Hall 2

Tools for working with Jade - Hall 2

stages where jade is cut and worked

3) The Day - level 3. Activities of daily life

Jade spoons hollowed at one end

I was more or less looking for the little painted ceramic horse that I saw before. Didn't find it. I had also forgotten how tactual but non-sparkly jade was.

family group

fishing

4) The Night - level 3 Mythology and war

War - illustration from Hall 4 - The Night

alligator as a fertility object

offerings

shaiman blowing smoke from leaves and tobacco for healing

burial practices

burial bundle

5) Ancestral Memory - level 4. What archaeology teaches us

Pottery in the Jade Museum

Ceramics at the Jade Museum

stone sphere for ceremonial purposes

6) Visitable Collection - level 5. Many cases of objects made from different materials from the three regions of Costa Rica.

Hall 6 - Visitable Collection

Stone owl at the Jade Museum

Stone owl with folded wings carrying an inverted carved head. According to religious beliefs, some species of birds carried souls to the afterlife or the spirit world

stone barrels and seats

Different stone objects to touch and discover the texture of pre-Columbian stone objects. (The sign was also in Braille)

We saw a couple that were at Mawamba there. We were there about a hour (could have been double that as we shorted the last two levels) We took 190 photos there - mostly Bob took them. He is very methodical about it.

I decided to try to find Cemeterio de Lomas de Salitral where some famous person named Ivan "Coach" Murrell is buried. Mario put it in his GPS but when we got there it wasn't a cemetery and no one knew that there was a cemetery around there. But we did pass another cemetery - La Piedad. So we went there. This turned out to be one of those fancy private cemeteries with flat markers.. We were only there for about 15 minutes. It was now noon.

Entrance to Camposanto la Piedad

When I looked at my photos later, I wondered about the one for Jose Vargas.

Grave of Jose Antonio Gutierrez Vargas

It turns out that Jose Antonio Gutierrez Vargas was a comedian and folklorist who was better known as Mena Olegario Barrantes. He began broadcasting on June 15, 1947 at Radio City. The character of Olegario Mena entertained several generations of Costa Ricans. He also starred as Don Tranquilino Ordonez with Carmen Granados who played Macedonia. He was part of the cast that performed the famous Costa Rican folk tune "The Purple Orchid" which was written by his brother Robert and Carlos Maria Lopez Castro in 1936. In addition to radio shows, he also appeared on television and in the theatre.

I decided that we probably had one more cemetery in us and Mario said he knew where Desampriados Cemetery was. He could park on the sidewalk - there was a parking attendant who could help you park and you would tip them. This was right on the street - not in a parking lot. I was interested in this cemetery because Desampriados means Abandoned. And it isn't. Apparently Desampriados is the name of the place and this is the municipal cemetery. Over the gate it says Quien Cree En Mi No Morira. Which means something like "Whoever believes in me will never die".

Gate of Desamparados Cemetery with Bob and me

Graves in Cementerio Desamparados

This was a very very big cemetery. Between us we took 356 photos. We were there about 45 minutes

Then Mario took us through the McDonalds drive through and we got food

and went back to the hotel. I paid him $20/hour for five hours worth.

Bob went out to Burger King again (this time they asked his name and he said Bob and they wrote down MOB which was amusing to the employees. Then he went and got milkshakes at POPS (which we also did in 1996).