If the Sleep Inn seems in an unusually festive mood these days, part of the reason is that the hotel has just celebrated its fifth anniversary of operation.

When the Sleep Inn first opened, no new hotels had been built in the central San José area for over fourteen years. The Sleep Inn heralded a new period of optimism and excitement in the downtown area, and it has witnessed a resurgence of activity in its immediate surroundings.

Along with the general enlivening of the Sleep Inn’s surroundings, several other changes have taken place during the five years of the hotel’s existence. The Sleep Inn has won a highly coveted hotel award, the city has undertaken several beautification projects in the neighborhood, and changes are in store for some of the hotel’s public spaces.

Stay tuned for details about some of the various changes in the Sleep Inn and its neighborhood during these past five years.

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Costa Rica’s Arenal Volcano has once again erupted into activity, spewing ash and lava and prompting the closure of the national park at its base. Here at the Sleep Inn blog, we have written about recent volcanic activity at the Poás Volcano and about the dramatic eruption of the Irazú Volcano in 1963. We would now like to share with you some volcano-themed haiku. As our regular readers might recall, we recently posted some haiku about Costa Rica, including one about volcanoes.

The first haiku alludes to a theory of UFO enthusiasts who argue that extra-terrestrials make their homes underneath the craters of volcanoes. According to the theory, volcanic eruptions are actually the revving engines of the spaceships that the extra-terrestrials keep docked in their volcanic garages.

A magmatic roar,
grinding of volcanic gears.
Eruption voyage.

The second haiku describes the experience of sitting in the hot springs at the base of Arenal while the volcano rumbles in the distance.

Steam over water,
warmth and danger coexist.
Intricate balance.

The final haiku describes a portion of the drive from the Monteverde Cloud Forest to Arenal. The journey winds through rolling green hills and ends along a rutted, unpaved portion of road through eerily robust vegetation.

The plants look phony,
covered in road dust and ash.
Strange-landscaped journey.

Let us know what you think of our volcano haiku. Or send us your own haiku.

Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing

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One of Latin America’s best culinary concoctions is pasta de guayaba, or guava paste. Made from the aromatic and seed-filled guava fruit, this paste is almost as good as candy and incredibly versatile. The Sleep Inn blogging team has a few recommendations for happy guava paste-eating as a great leisure-time activity.

On their own, guavas can be difficult to eat. Their flesh is peach-colored and sweet, but it surrounds a core of pulpy seeds that some people find unnerving. When most people eat guavas right off the tree, they either swallow the seeds whole or spit them out, often making for messy eating. Another drawback to the guava is its attractiveness to worms. Any fruit that lands on the ground almost immediately becomes a home for worms, making tree-climbing a near-requirement for the enjoyment of the fresh fruit.

Guava paste solves all of these problems. Made by cooking the guava flesh with some sugar, the paste has no seeds and, of course, no worms. It’s also conveniently available in every grocery store. In Costa Rica, the paste often comes in flat rectangular “bars,” perfect for slicing and eating plain. However, several interesting combinations can enliven the basic guava paste.

Some people layer squares of guava paste and cheese, spearing both with a toothpick. Queso fresco, the mild Costa Rican cheese, is an ideal cheese accompaniment to guava paste. The layered mouthful is a charming combination of sweetness and mild creaminess, and it makes a perfect hors d’oeuvre.

Other people enliven their guava paste-cheese combination with a cocktail onion. The addition of the onion provides a tangy and crunchy counterpart to the fruit and cheese.

Guava paste is so mild and sweet that it also pairs nicely with very spicy flavors. Some people like to eat it with jalapeño, a tingling treat for lovers of the classic sweet/spicy flavor combination.

Of course, guava paste can substitute for jam or jelly in any kind of sandwich or bread combination. Some cooks also use it as a glaze for ham or pork, and others use it in the place of jam in baked fruit desserts.

We recommend guava paste in all its forms, and we welcome blog readers to write and let us know about their own guava paste concoctions.

Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing.

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A trip to Costa Rica can be a sensory adventure. Visitors to the country describe its glorious sights–its beaches, volcanoes and tropical forests–and its delicious flavors–gallo pinto, fresh tortillas and exotic fruits. Northerners rave about Costa Rica’s balmy tropical climate–the warmth of its oceans, its pleasant tropical breezes and its near-constant sunshine. And others are thrilled to hear Spanish spoken all around them, when they aren’t listening to the thunder of a tropical rainstorm or to exotic birdcalls on a walk through the jungle. However, few tourists ever really describe the wondrous smells they encounter on a trip to Costa Rica. But we believe that the scent of a Costa Rican trip is something to savor.

During the rainy season, visitors to Costa Rica can experience the complex smell of a tropical rainstorm. At the beach, the rain carries with it the green, vegetal smell of tropical undergrowth; the scent of clean, wet sand and the salty undercurrent of the storm-tossed sea. In San José, the rain has the distinctly urban smell of wet paving stones and the steamy scent wafting from outdoor food stalls, but it still has within it a baseline of the tropical Costa Rican wilderness–a smell of dark soil and wet leaves.

The beaches of Costa Rica have their own smells. The harsh, raw smell of the inside of a green coconut, or “pipa,” mixes with the briny scent of the sea and a pleasant underlying smell of sea life. All give an outdoor meal of ceviche and a fruit drink, or “fresco,” a layer of flavor they don’t have anywhere else in the country.

The volcanoes of Costa Rica have a distinctive ashy, sulfuric smell that reminds visitors of the geological tumult before them. Poás has the smell of rich, black earth, damp under the thick vegetation that grows right near the volcano’s sulfur-filled crater. Irazú, the volcano that looks most like a lunar landscape, has a dry, burnt smell that blows in cool, damp gusts across the black fields of ash. Arenal smells of fresh eruptions and the steamy warmth of the hot springs at its base.

As much as Costa Rica is a pleasure for the eyes, ears and taste buds, it is a marvelous destination for the intrepid visitor with a scent for adventure.

Read more about cas, the best tropical fruit drink in Costa Rica.

Read more about visiting Costa Rica during the rainy season.

Read more about Costa Rica’s volcanoes.

Read the rest of this entry »

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With the February 2010 election of Laura Chinchilla as Costa Rica’s first woman president, Costa Ricans have naturally
begun to consider the changing role of women in Costa Rican politics and in Costa Rican society. Just as women’s roles have changed and expanded all over the world, the role of the Costa Rican woman has shifted with the times. Nowhere is this change more evident than in the well-known primer, Paco y Lola, which almost every Costa Rican child used to learn to read.

Just like Dick and Jane, Paco y Lola, first written and edited in 1958 by Emma Gamboa and Ondina Peraza, focuses on the daily activities of a nuclear family, teaching children how to read the names of objects and activities they might encounter on an ordinary day. Paco y Lola reflects the social attitudes of its time. In one section of the book, the father reads (”Papá lee.”), while the mother toils away in the kitchen, kneading a mound of “masa” to make tortillas (”Mamá amasa la masa.”). Paco and Lola each take part in fairly typical gender-prescribed activities, and the book reflects the typical values–and 1950s furnishings–of the mid-century Costa Rican family and home.

Despite what many have described as sexism–or outright “machismo”–in the first edition of Paco y Lola, the book functions very well as a Spanish reading primer. Its authors have a clear appreciation for the joys of pronunciation and language and a great sense of alliteration and word play. The authors make reading both entertaining and fairly effortless for their young readers.

Spanish vowel pronunciation has less variation than vowel pronunciation in English, and the authors make the most of repetition in teaching readers how to recognize and pronounce vowels. (In “Mamá amasa la masa,” for example, readers get a good sense of the short Spanish “a” and the opportunity to pronounce it in accented and unaccented syllables.) Once young readers have mastered the vowel sounds, they can take on any number of longer and more complex word and sentence constructions. The book rewards the persistent with a great deal of vocabulary and interesting lessons about Costa Rican activities and animals. Paco y Lola also provides painless lessons in the use of the accent mark, or “tilde,” whose rules students will later memorize in school.

Post-1958 editions of Paco y Lola have strived to eliminate the gender inequalities of the first edition, and readers of the newer version can now see a truer reflection of Costa Rica’s increasing gender equality. In either its original or its updated form, however, Paco y Lola is an entertaining and effective Spanish language-learning tool.

Order a copy of Paco y Lola.

Learn more about verbs in Spanish.

Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing.

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Costa Rica elected its first woman president, Laura Chinchilla, on February 7, 2010, a triumph not only for Chinchilla’s Liberación party, but for Costa Rican women in general. Those who consider Costa Rica another male-centered Latin American country can now see the country in a whole new light. In fact, Chinchilla’s victory is part of an existing move away from traditional Latin American “machismo.” Laura Chinchilla now becomes the fifth Latin American woman to become president of her country, following woman presidents in Nicaragua, Panama, Chile and Argentina.

In her victory speech on election night, Laura Chinchilla promised to fight crime in the downtown San José area, to make Costa Rica the first carbon-neutral country in the world, and, in general, to help Costa Rica become the most developed nation in Latin America.

Read more about Laura Chinchilla’s victory speech.

Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing.

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For those who like their cocktails sweet and creamy, the Magnolia Restaurant is proud to offer its new Casanova, a heady mixture of rum, evaporated milk, condensed milk and beer. Served in a tall, curvy glass, the Casanova is like a lively vanilla milkshake, and it has already garnered much local attention.

In December 2009, The Tico Times selected the Casanova as one of the Top Ten Costa Rican Cocktails of the year. The drink is soothing and sweet–the perfect post-beach or pre-roulette concoction for intrepid visitors to the Sleep Inn. Try the Casanova and experience true cocktail inspiration.

See a photograph of the Magnolia Restaurant’s Casanova on the Tico Times website.

Read about the Magnolia Restaurant’s fabulous pisco sour.

Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing.

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Business visitors to Costa Rica often choose hotels based solely on the availability of group meeting spaces. Businesspeople seek meeting spaces that accommodate large groups comfortably, are accessible to the hotel, and have modern electronic conveniences. They often hope to find spaces where food is available or where catering is an option. They might also hope that these meeting spaces are pleasant–and that they might, perhaps, even have a view. But pleasantness and views are usually not an option in most hotel meeting rooms.

The Sleep Inn is proud to announce that its new Balcón meeting room (the Salón Balcón) meets every requirement of the ideal business meeting space. Located on the same property as the Sleep Inn Hotel, the Balcón meeting room can accommodate between 28 and 48 persons, depending on the arrangement of its chairs and tables. The room is completely wired for electronic and computer equipment, making it ideal for conferences and presentations. The extensive Magnolia Restaurant menu is available for all business meetings. Best of all, as its name suggests, the Balcón meeting room has a view. The room is located on the second floor and has french doors leading onto a balcony that offers views of San José and of the surrounding mountains.

The Sleep Inn believes its Balcón meeting room provides the most basic of business-meeting requirements while simultaneously offering the kind of attractiveness not usually found in most hotel meeting spaces. Call the Sleep Inn to inquire about holding your own meeting in the Balcón.

Learn more about the Balcón meeting room at the Sleep Inn Hotel San José Downtown.

Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing.

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Costa Rica has long inspired literary and artistic tributes to its natural beauty and charming lifestyle. Painters and poets, enchanted by Costa Rica’s history and its people, create great artistic works with the country as their inspiration.

This posting showcases three haiku pieces that pay tribute to facets of the Costa Rican experience that visitors always find remarkable. The first haiku describes the ominous beauty of Costa Rica’s volcanoes, which lend a thrilling, dangerous edge to the country’s otherwise serene beauty. Visitors to the Magnolia Restaurant can enjoy a similar geologically themed painting, by artist Denis Salas, in the niche over the piano. The ethereal grays and blues of the painting suggest the smoky landscape around an active volcano. The haiku captures the volcano’s explosive energy:

Active volcano,
Red-rimmed, rumbling at night.
The violent earth speaks.

A second haiku draws its inspiration from Costa Rica’s abundant tropical fruit, a real tourist favorite. The lively fruit paintings in the Sleep Inn breakfast area similarly celebrate this marvelous tropical abundance:

Slices of sunshine
Lying on a morning plate.
Fresh mango breakfast.

A final haiku hearkens back to Costa Rica’s past, a quieter time when ox carts and their drivers slowly crisscrossed the countryside, delivering farm goods and supplies to a country not yet industrialized. Just outside the Sleep Inn’s smoke-free casino, guests can enjoy a beautiful depiction of the ox carts in old Costa Rica. The haiku showcases this same nostalgic sense of history:

Oxen and driver
In the days before cities.
Driving on the brink of change.

Read more about Costa Rica’s volcanoes.

Read more about Costa Rican mangoes and other tropical Costa Rican fruit.

Read more about Costa Rican ox carts, now a part of the UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage.

Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing.

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In the past fifteen years, Costa Rica has witnessed the same kind of building boom that has affected many other parts of the world, often with depressing results. In Costa Rica, new construction has encroached upon the jungle at the beach and carved its way into the country’s lush, green mountainsides. Some animals and birds have lost their homes, and air quality has suffered. But new construction might also have had another often-ignored effect on the emotional landscape of building occupants. Brand-new buildings have changed the relationship people once had to architecture in Costa Rica.

Throughout most of the last century, construction happened only gradually in Costa Rica. Building materials were expensive, and construction itself took a great deal of time. People built both houses and commercial buildings solidly and with little expectation of tearing them down to rebuild. When a new business or an organization needed a building for its headquarters, few ever considered the construction of a brand-new building. Instead, almost all moved into existing buildings–mostly houses–and adapted them to their particular needs. Schools, religious groups, cultural groups and small businesses almost always used old houses for their activities, and members and clients were accustomed to the idea of conducting business and activities in former residences.

This architectural repurposing was, of course, very economical, but it had an interesting emotional component as well. Users of the adapted buildings felt a connection to their former occupants and sensed the organic continuity of the architectural space. Schoolchildren often attended classes in former kitchens, reading and doing math problems with the reassuring awareness that someone once washed vegetables and cooked the rice and beans in that same room. Students in a repurposed school library or science lab could make out the former entrances to grand living rooms or graceful halls where former occupants once had parties or gazed out onto private gardens. Office workers grew accustomed to the awkwardness of bathrooms and closets in every room and enjoyed the unexpected interior patios that once illuminated the bedrooms of their houses-turned-offices.

Even when they weren’t consciously aware of doing so, users of repurposed buildings shaped their movements and their activities to the spaces and architectural arrangements of the people who occupied these buildings before them. New uses and altered internal configurations could never obliterate the sense that the new occupants were standing at the same windows, walking through the same hallways and enjoying the same plays of interior light that the previous occupants once knew. Users of these old buildings could always feel the traces of movement and activity of the people who came before them. Architecture retained a sense of the recent past, of a history that had only recently slipped away, leaving behind built traces and hints of itself.

As in all modernizing countries, Costa Rica now needs a great deal of new construction. Old houses often get torn down to make way for sleek offices and other commercial spaces with highly specific architectural needs. But lovers of Costa Rica’s past can still visit some of the old houses and feel the memories of those who passed through them.

Read about repurposing and inadvertent recycling in Costa Rica.

Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing.

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