Costa Rica has many beautiful places and wonderful tourist attractions, but certainly downtown San José is usually not considered among them, the traffic, the problems with infrastructure, areas that present security problems, and many times just the erroneous concept that “There is nothing worth doing or seeing in San José” keeps national and foreign tourists away from the capital city.

It was precisely the hope that San José would stop being just a “pass through” city, and that locals and foreigners learned to appreciate and therefore take care of San José, that motivated 31-year-old Costa Rican Carlos Alfaro to create San José Free Walking Tour (SJFWT).

The San Jose Free Walking Tour is offered every day starting at 9 a.m. and it takes tourists through different areas of the capital city on a three-hour tour.

Alfaro fell in love with the idea after a trip to Argentina where he did a walking tour of Buenos Aires and came back to Costa Rica with his mind set on implementing it in the country.
The first “official” tour took place in February of this year. When he first designed the tour he had a list of 40 places he wanted to include but that was a big number and had to bring it down to half to keep the tour under 3 hours long. He did hours of research using the internet, books and the stories people had of each place; he was surprised of the many things he didn’t know and had no idea existed, he realized San José has a lot to offer and saw the potential on passing the knowledge to others.

Initially, the idea was to start with tours on Saturdays and Sundays only but the first month he had to work every day. Approximately 500 people have taken the tour so far.

There are now six more tour guides working with Carlos, young students and workers that dedicate at least three hours a week to these tours. The tours are tip-based and are offered in Spanish, English and also in German with previous reservation.

San Jose Free Walking Tour leaves from the National Theater, takes your through the National Park, China Town, the Plaza de las Garantías Sociales, and several other stops before finishing at the Central Bank of Costa Rica, the tour includes a short stop in the coffee shop at the Jade Museum.

Reservation is not required, if you wish to take the tour all you have to do is show up before 9 a.m. at the main entrance of the National Theater, you can also get additional information through the website http://sanjosewalking.com/ or if you wish to make a reservation for a private tour or a group tour you can email Carlos at [email protected]