And the biggest oxcart. We also found the painted oxcart type bar…and some actual artists.

This was a great tour but getting there required a police escort. We used waze to navigate but one wrong turn took us up a barely passable rutted path where we were lucky to find the policia coming down the hill. After some English Spanish negotiation they decided to escort us to the coffee finca. They got out of the car with a clipboard then but we feigned silly American and waved them off. Phew….no charge.
This tour is highly recommended. They have become a bio diverse organic farm due to health issues and learning how to grow many crops to minimize the need for chemicals and still make a profit. And we learned a lot about coffee and how to drink it. There are 70,000 coffee farms in the area and they average 7 acres. El Toledo is 60 % coffee and 40 % other crops that they use or sell… Cashew, many fruits, herbs etc. and the coffee and lunch was exceptional . Gabriel took us through and his parents started the farm.

Oh yeah, forgot about this photo op for Steve.

The kids enjoyed getting coffee husks dumped on them to play with.

A type of square banana. Yes you heard that correcto.
And this is a cashew tree. We tasted the stem, the nut thing at the end is poisonous until dried and roasted.

And this is the lunch they prepare from what they grow on the farm including tumeric in the rice. The squash salad was chayote, the patty was yucca. Muy Bueno .

We negotiated buying painted coffee burlap bags and coffee from their farm. A nice family indeed.

This is an all metal church imported from Europe.

And since we had shorts on we stayed outside.

It was a slog from Turrialba to Grecia through mountainous windy roads and San Jose traffic but we arrived in the afternoon to the cabina number seven at Hotel Mango Valley which was a wonderful respite up in the hills above Grecia.

Hard to see in this photo, but the widest rainbow ever presented itself over the mountain.

Oh! Watch out for the sugar cane truck on the way up.

Yes it had to be done. We spent 4 days on the Caribbean without chairs so the Mecca of everything appeared ….Walmart. We won’t be caught short on the Pacific coast. But there is so much more….

The real deal!  From Spain!  THE PUERCO MEJOR.  Let the snacking begin…

“YIPY”

Fortress Walmart is all parking on the first floor.

But the main reason to stop in Cartago is the most religious pilgrimage in Costa Rica…Basilica Nuestra de Los Angeles

The Turrialba Bed and Breakfast has a very lovely courtyard.

…and here’s a sweet little park in the center of town.

Not such great photos, but I quite liked their modernist Catholic church.

Lovely live music during mass that sunday.

Hello visitor, you are about to go on a photo tour, a tour that will take you through many emotions. Terror, curiosity, love, hunger, learning, friendship and of course, cheese.

We were running late to La Finca Florita so we took the most direct route, the one best suited for mountain goats and dirt bikes.

Seems most things here are clinging to steep slopes or built on top of the local ridges. Roads make transportation possible, but only if you have a skinny vehicle as most bridges are one lane only. Many of the ravines these bridges cross are what you might call “imposing”. As in… did anyone cross this before a bridge was built?

Driving here you spend a lot of time waiting for the horse to get out of the road, followed by the limping grandmother, and then the small children, then the giant truck. You start to go and then and some guy backs out of his driveway. Finally you think you can go and someone in a scooter jumps in front of you and then you have to wait for the garbage truck.

Road conditions can be rustic, like being in Nevada. At last we impressed no one by driving our War Rig over the side of a cliff and turning around in the half-parking space at our Cheese destination and thus turning around and driving back out the goat path to a parking spot someone might consider “sensible” until someone later realized she’d have to walk up the hill…

By this time my lungs were aching for air…

On one side a crocodile, on the other a jaguar.  Thought to represent life and death.  This massive stone was dragged up the hill by some poor team of suckers who didn’t know we’d have hover boards by 2005.  In addition to doing that without dirt bikes and cell phones they also managed to align it perfectly north-south and east-west.

Tombs.  This could be your final resting place.

The view towards the area of the city that’s been cleared.

As usual, the city goes on far into the jungle.

Joyce is attempting to give you an idea of the scale of an established leaf cutter ant mound. It’s huge.

You’ll have to use your imaginations to see the huge conical roof over each of the house mounds.

Of course, Mr. Bigg lived in the biggest. But dudes were less important in this society. Even up to today the woman’s bloodline decides things and the guys are around to lift heavy things.

See the ghosts from the future? Centuries ago the locals knew this spot was haunted!

Why was this a good spot for a city? It’s way up a giant hill, and on two sides you’ve got this. No surprise visitors, eh?

Plantain comes in many wonderful forms pâtécones fresh made chips bagged chips and even on tico sushi!
And the church that shares a wall with our room…and we were lucky enough to wake up to church music Sunday morning…early.

This is the closest that Costa Rica has to ancient ruins – that have been uncovered and are available to tour. We had a tour guide take us along with our friends on the walk through the forest. They had a working aqueduct system still. The highest mound had the Chiefs house made of balsa.

This bird is rare to see.
They were nestled high on the mountain between two rivers and the Turrialba volcano which is still active.