Shepherds Pie and Rancho Garibaldi!

This morning Mau had to go out early to do some work on a project for uni, so after instructions and lots of drawing on maps for buses and places to visit he left at 8.45 leaving us with his parents and little brother. We were going to get the bus into town, but they decided to take us instead as they could show us where Andy could buy a second hand raincoat instead of paying a fortune in one of the American Import clothes shops (of which there are many!) and make sure that the gate guard would let us back in later! We found a suitable coat for $4 in the second shop we looked in and so they left us to continue looking round the centre of the city and to buy ingredients as we had said we'd like to cook dinner for them all that night. The town centre of San Jose is a bit like Northampton but without a shopping centre, it is mainly pedestrianised and has lots of clothes and shoe shops as well as street vendors, some of whom were selling some very cheap cds....$1 for salsa cd with 120 songs and the same with bachata...yes please!! We found a kind of indoor tourist souvenir shop full of individual stands selling much the same stuff, it was quite hard to know who owned which bits and I think we may have got postcards from 2 places and paid one, but never mind!! We also managed to haggle and get a couple of birthday/christmas presents at reasonable prices as well as talking about various things in Costa Rica in a mix of Spanish and English with one of the vendors. It was soon time to find a supermarket and buy what we needed to make dinner for 7 (us, Mau, his 2 brothers and his parents) and decided upon Cottage Pie which we hoped would be something new for them to try. After making our purchases we managed to get on the correct bus and made it back to Mau's house with no problems. Shortly after we arrived Mau got back from uni and we chatted some more and had a rest before making dinner. It was a success as everyone, even David who is 7, liked it and we talked about typical food and dishes for a while before getting ready to go out for the evening. Mau and his friend Andrea took us to an historic dancehall called Rancho Garibaldi which is currently celebrating its 37th year and is home to some of the traditional bands and dances of Costa Rica. We watched as people of all ages danced Bolero, Merengue and a kind of Cumbia danced only in CR called Swing Creollo. We had a go ourselves and enjoyed trying to learn dances just by watching then experimenting...it seemed to go ok but maybe we got some odd looks?! Andrea is studying dance at university and was trying to help teach Mau who doesnt really dance at all which wasnt too hard as he already seems to have very good timing...I think its built in to Latinos lol! At about 12.30 we left to avoid the crowds of people trying to get out the ridiculously crammed carpark...it really was a piece of choreography getting the cars in there in the first place, and went home, shattered but bouyant from dancing.