Costa Rica

Costa Rica crosses the isthmus between two oceans in a few hours by road, and nearly all of it is mountain or shore. Volcanoes such as Arenal, Poás and Irazú run through the north and centre, and the higher Talamanca range fills the south. Between them the cool Central Valley holds the main towns. Green turtles nest at Tortuguero on the Caribbean, Corcovado’s rainforest meets the Pacific on the Osa peninsula, and far offshore Cocos Island draws divers to its hammerhead sharks.

Chiefdoms in the Diquís delta carved near-perfect granite spheres, some taller than a person, for purposes still unknown. Columbus anchored off the Caribbean coast in 1502, but the province stayed poor and thinly settled under Spain, and independence came with the rest of Central America in 1821. Coffee exports to Britain from the 1840s enriched the planters and paid for the National Theatre. After a short civil war in 1948 the army was abolished, a step written into the constitution of 1949.

Ticos use ‘pura vida’ as greeting, thanks and farewell, and breakfast is gallo pinto, rice and black beans fried together. Each August pilgrims walk to Cartago to honour La Negrita, a small dark statue of the Virgin, and Sarchí’s craftsmen paint ox carts in bright geometric patterns. Coffee, bananas and pineapples share the export trade with medical devices made in free zones and with ecotourism, and dams, geothermal wells and wind farms supply nearly all the electricity.