Costa Rica (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Matthew Firestone [83]
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Central Valley & Highlands
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ALAJUELA & THE NORTHERN VALLEY
ALAJUELA
BUTTERFLY FARM
PARQUE NACIONAL VOLCÁN POÁS
WEST TO ATENAS
NORTHWEST TO SARCHÍ
ZARCERO
BAJOS DEL TORO
PARQUE NACIONAL JUAN CASTRO BLANCO
PALMARES
SAN RAMÓN
LOS ÁNGELES CLOUD FOREST ADVENTURE PARK
HEREDIA AREA
HEREDIA
BARVA
CARTAGO AREA
CARTAGO
PARQUE NACIONAL VOLCÁN IRAZÚ
VALLE DE OROSI
TURRIALBA AREA
TURRIALBA
MONUMENTO NACIONAL ARQUEOLÓGICO GUAYABO
PARQUE NACIONAL VOLCÁN TURRIALBA
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It is on the coffee-draped hillsides of the Central Valley that you will find Costa Rica’s heart and soul. This is not only the physical center of the country, it is its cultural and spiritual core. It is here that the Spanish first settled. It is here that coffee built a prosperous nation. And it is here that picturesque highland villages still gather for centuries-old fiestas. It is also here that you’ll get to fully savor Costa Rica’s country cooking: artisanal cheeses, steamy corn cakes, crisp pieces of pork and fresh-caught river trout. It’s a simple cuisine, but it is comforting – one that feels like home.
For the traveler, the Central Valley offers a break from the tourist industrial complex on the coasts. In this mountainous region of nooks and crannies, entertainment consists of hanging out in a bustling mountain town, and watching folks gather for market days and church. That doesn’t mean, however, that there is nothing to do. You can ride raging rapids, see space-age shrubbery, visit the country’s oldest colonial church, attend solemn religious processions, look for trogons in mist-shrouded forests and hike myriad volcanoes – the geological phenomena that have provided the country with its indescribably fertile soil and its long-running agricultural traditions. So take you’re your time. When you explore the Central Valley, you’ll not only witness great beauty – you’ll see the landscape that gave Costa Rica its character.
HIGHLIGHTS
White-knuckling it down the cascading rapids of the Ríos Reventazón or Pacuare (Click here)
Seeing the country’s most venerated religious relic at the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles in Cartago
Peering into the mammoth craters of the area’s grumbling volcanoes: Irazú (Click here), Poás (Click here) and Turrialba (Click here)
Winding along scenic mountain roads to Zarcero, home of trippy topiary and organic farming
Hiking through the serene surroundings at the country’s major archaeological site, Monumento Nacional Arqueológico Guayabo
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History
As in other parts of the country, there is little in the historical record about the ethnicities that inhabited the Central Valley prior to the arrival of the Spanish. What is known is that the people of the area – largely the Huetar – practiced an animist religion, produced stone sculpture and clay pottery, and communicated in a Chibchan dialect that is now extinct. They also developed and maintained the ancient highland city of Guayabo (Click here) – which is today the biggest and most significant pre-Columbian archeological site in the country.
Though Columbus grazed the country’s shore in 1502, European settlement in Costa Rica would not begin in earnest until 1563, when Juan Vásquez de Coronado founded the colonial capital of Cartago, what is today Costa Rica’s oldest Spanish city. Over the next two centuries, Spanish communities would pop up in Heredia, San José and Orosi. Throughout this period, however, the area remained a colonial backwater, a checkerboard of Spanish farming communities and indios bravos (‘fierce Indians’), native ethnicities that had not come under colonial dominion – and who practiced a largely itinerant agriculture.
It was only after independence, in the 1830s, that the area began to prosper with the expanded cultivation of coffee. The grano de oro (golden bean) transformed the country, providing