Vacation Story: Costa Rica

Our next stop on vacation took us to Costa Rica.  The verdant place is just an amazing stop, for both its history and just how wonderful the forests are.  Here we traveled to the Else Kintzler Garden and the Sarchi Ox Cart factory.

The Gardens were a roughly hour and a half long drive from port, which was fine.  Our guide gave a brief overview of the country, and his time as a coffee picker in his youth.  It was not nearly as informative I thought as our guide in Nicaragua, but he was still an affable fellow.  One highlight of the bus ride had to be the discussions about cashews.  Its a popular crop in Costa Rica, but almost all of our group thought it was like a peanut.  Nope, it comes from a tree with a huge fruit attached.

After our long ride we arrived at the Botanical Gardens.  It was a pretty beautiful walk through, and we saw
some beautiful flowers and a little waterfall.  It was quiet and peaceful in the garden, a perfect spot for contemplation.  At the end, there was a chance to release some Butterflies which we took and amazed our daughter with.

 After the butterflies we traveled to Sarchi, a small mountain town where they still make Ox Carts the same way they have been for hundreds of years.  The carts were once the most common way to get the coffee from the mountains where it grows to the coats for sale.  The carts are still used by some people today,  but are mostly decorative.  They are hand painted and are an amazing site to see.

This was a pretty solid excursion, with the only downside being the long bus rides.