Explore The Valle Central and the highlands
Founded in 1563 by Juan Vazquez de Coronado, CARTAGO, meaning “Carthage”, was Costa Rica’s capital for three hundred years before the centre of power was moved to San José in 1823. Like its ancient namesake, the city has been razed a number of times, although in this case by earthquakes instead of Romans – two, in 1823 and 1910, almost demolished the place. Most of the town’s fine nineteenth-century and fin-de-siècle buildings were destroyed, and what has grown up in their place – the usual assortment of shops and haphazard modern buildings – is not particularly appealing. Nowadays, Cartago functions mainly as a busy market and shopping centre, with some industry around its periphery. The star attraction is its soaring cathedral, or basílica, dedicated to La Negrita, Costa Rica’s patron saint.
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Parque Nacional Volcán Irazú
Parque Nacional Volcán Irazú
The blasted lunar landscape of PARQUE NACIONAL VOLCÁN IRAZÚ (daily 8am–3.30pm; $10; t 2200-5025) reaches its highest point at 3432m and, on clear days, offers fantastic views all the way to the Caribbean coast. Famous for having had the gall to erupt on the day President John F. Kennedy visited Costa Rica on March 19, 1963, Irazú has been more or less calm ever since. But while its main crater is far less active, in terms of bubblings and rumblings, than that of Volcán Poás, its deep depression and the strange algae-green lake that fills it create an undeniably dramatic sight.
Looming 32km north of Cartago, the volcano makes for a long and entirely uphill but scenic trip, especially in the early morning before the inevitable clouds roll in (about 10am). While the main crater draws the crowds, it’s worth noting that the shallow bowl to its right, the flat-bottomed and largely unimpressive Diego de la Haya crater, is the remnant of Irazú’s first and largest eruption: when it blew in 1723, the eruption lasted ten months and showered San José in ash.
There’s not much to do around here after viewing the main crater from the mirador – no official trails cut through this section of the park, though you can scramble among the grey ash dunes that have built up on Playa Hermosa, the buried older crater that spreads to the left of the walkway and is dotted with what little vegetation that can survive in this otherworldly environment. Stay behind the barriers at all times, though, as volcanic ash crumbles easily, and you could end up falling into the ominous-looking lake.
- Valle Orosí
- Turrialba and around
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El Día de la Negrita
El Día de la Negrita
The celebration of the Virgin of Los Angeles (El Día de la Negrita) on August 2 is one of the most important days in the Costa Rican religious calendar, when hundreds of pilgrims make the journey to Cartago to visit the tiny black statue of the Virgin, tucked away in a shallow subterranean antechamber beneath the crypt in the town’s basílica. It is a tradition in this grand, vaulting church for pilgrims to shuffle down the aisle towards the altar on their knees, rosaries fretting in their hands as they whisper a steady chorus of Hail Marys: indeed, many will have travelled like this from as far away as San José to pay their respects.
