Giant oxcart
Sarchí square.
Crsoccer08 — CC BY 3.0 · Julián Monge-Nájera — CC BY-SA 4.0 · JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD — CC BY-SA 3.0 · JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD — CC BY-SA 3.0
Two small towns in the green countryside west of the capital, combined in one trip. Sarchí is Costa Rica's crafts capital, famous for the traditional wooden carreta, the ox-drawn cart once used to haul coffee, painted with intricate, colourful flowers, stars and circles; UNESCO has listed the country's oxherding and oxcart traditions as intangible cultural heritage. In Sarchí's square stands a giant painted oxcart once recorded as the world's largest, and in the town's workshops craftsmen paint carts, furniture and souvenirs by hand before visitors, in bright colours mastered by families for generations. Zarcero is a mountain town famed for its unique garden in the main square, where cypress trees have been clipped since the 1960s into animal shapes, arches and green tunnels that visitors wander through like a museum of trees. The road between the towns passes coffee farms and green hills. It is often combined with nearby Grecia.
Sarchí square.
Craftsmen at work.
Clipped trees.
Western Valley; Sarchí about an hour and Zarcero about an hour and a half from San José
Its brightly painted wooden oxcarts, a tradition on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, and its craft workshops.