Costa Rica: Day 1

So this has been a pretty interesting trip so far. Arrived here about 9 am Costa Rica time, which is 10 am Miami time. Was pretty tired from the lack of sleep. But I was excited to start off my first day in San Jose.
First thing I noticed about San Jose was its remarkable resemblence to Taiwan. Although its a lot dirtier than Taiwan, but the cars, plants, and weather all seemed really familiar and deja vu like.
Our first day involved a city tour. We went to a couple of museums, a catholic church, and a gift shop that sold gold charms that were created to be like the ones made by the natives.
First thing I noticed was the complete lack of culture this country has. Most of it involves war and dictatorship. Some rebellions and the complete destruction of the native tribes...pretty much what the Spaniards did wherever they went.
Second thing was the crappy tourism of this city which has many tourist traps like restaurants and gift shops.
The tour I took almost seemed like it was meant to lead you into buying little gold figures of frogs. The tour basically ended at that location, which makes sense, but it was just so obvious that it almost seemed like a scheme to cheat you.
Another tourist trap was the restuarants. The hotel restaurant overcharged you on basically everything. The restaurant down the street over charges on Italian food, and opens up a bottle of water instead of just good ole water from the tap. Our dinner bill came out to almost $300 because instead of charging for how many appetizers we got, they charged us by the person, which made the total of 3 appetizers, equal to $100. Anyways, I stole the bottle of water we had and here I am, back at the hotel.
Anyways, more tomorrow.