Costa Rica 10/15 (Day 2 part 1)

We woke up to a rainy morning (above is the view from our little suite) at the Hotel Martino.
Here is Lena ready to head out the the main building for breakfast.
The Hotel Martino was a strange place. Our suite was quite elegant, with hardwood ceilings (difficult to describe), very nice furniture and a bathroom as nice as any in a five star hotel. The grounds were also very well kept. In other words, all of the "big stuff" was great. At the same time, it totally skimped on the easy stuff. The pillows were tiny and cheap and one bedroom was missing a door handle. The same thing could be said about breakfast. Breakfast was supposed to be included, but all they had was bread (which was homemade) and a toaster, some yogurt in plastic containers and some mediocre cut-up fruit. But the paucity of breakfast was likely due to the fact that it was the low season and it did not appear that there were many guests at the hotel. Yet breakfast was still very nice. They cooked us some eggs, brought juice and coffee and we sat on a patio with a beautiful view. There was even a clean friendly German Shepard that came by to keep us company. In any event, by the time that we had finished our first meal in Coast Rica we had already broken a number of dietary rules, on which the kind nurses at Kaiser has instructed, including eating fruit that we had not peeled ourselves, drank fruit juice and ate yogurt.
After eating we went across the street to Zoo Ave (Hotel Martino sells discounted passes to the Zoo). Once there we almost immediately saw a golden orb Spider. We actually saw many of these spiders while we were in Costa Rica. They have the most amazing golden colored webs.

Here is a Ocelot also at Zoo Ave. It was very active while we were visiting which made it hard to get a good picture, but it was very exciting for us.

Zoo Ave is not like a traditional zoo. It only displays animals that can't be returned to the wild and they have strong captive breeding programs to increase the wild numbers of endangered birds. It is a small, but very welcoming place.

If you do get into San Jose in the late afternoon or evening without time to your ultimate destination, we would highly recommend staying at Hotel Martino and visiting the Zoo. The staff was very nice and the rooms were an excellent value.