Cartago

Cartago was founded in the 1560s and served as the capital until the seat of government moved to the neighbouring valley in 1823, and its story since is essentially seismic. Major earthquakes destroyed the town in the nineteenth century and again in the early twentieth, and the second one ended construction of the main parish church for good. Rather than clear the site, the town kept the roofless stone shell and planted it: the walls, arches and empty window openings now enclose a formal garden with ponds and paths, and it is the most atmospheric place in the province, precisely because it was never finished. This is also the answer to something visitors notice everywhere else in the country — Costa Rica has almost no grand colonial architecture, and the reason is that its colonial capital kept falling down. A short walk away is the basilica, a large and elaborate church in a Byzantine-influenced style, which holds a small dark stone image of the Virgin found near this spot in the seventeenth century and venerated ever since. It is the most important religious site in the country by a wide margin. Once a year enormous numbers of people walk here from the capital and much further, filling the roads through the night; the date is fixed and worth checking before you travel, because the town is transformed and the approach roads are closed. On any ordinary day it is quiet, open and free to enter, with a spring beneath it where visitors collect water.

The country's highest volcano stands above the old capital and is one of the few anywhere that you can reach by car almost to the rim. The road climbs through vegetable farms and dairy country — this is Costa Rica's market garden, and the fields of onions and potatoes on impossibly steep ground are part of the interest — and emerges above the treeline into a grey, ashy, almost lunar landscape with a crater holding a mineral lake whose colour shifts between green and grey depending on rainfall and chemistry. It is genuinely cold up there, frequently in cloud, and the view that makes it famous — both the Pacific and the Caribbean at once — happens on a minority of mornings, so go early and treat the panorama as a bonus rather than the point. Access can be restricted at short notice depending on gas readings, which is worth confirming the day before. Further east, the province's other major volcano has been through a long active period and its status governs how close anyone can get; the surrounding area is agricultural highland with a serious tradition of dairy and cheese. Between and below them the land is the most intensively farmed in the country, and the drive up either mountain is a straightforward half day from the capital, which the transport guide would rightly say to allow more time for than the distance suggests.

On the flank of the eastern volcano lies the most important archaeological site in Costa Rica: a pre-Columbian settlement occupied for well over a thousand years and abandoned before the Spanish arrived, now a national monument in regenerating forest. What survives is civil engineering rather than monuments — circular stone house foundations, paved causeways running out into the trees, stepped terraces, and an aqueduct system that still carries water today, which is the detail that stops people in their tracks. It is a modest site by the standards of Mexico or Guatemala and an important one by any standard, and it is the single best corrective to the idea that this country's history begins with coffee. South of the old capital, a river valley curls through steep coffee terraces past a small colonial church that has been in continuous use since the eighteenth century — the oldest still functioning in the country — with a hot spring nearby, a reservoir, and viewpoints over the whole green bowl. Close to the valley mouth, a botanical garden built around one of the most important orchid collections in the Americas is worth timing for the flowering months. The whole loop is a relaxed day's drive from either the capital or the old one, and it is the part of this province that most rewards having no fixed plan.

The province's eastern edge falls away steeply towards the Caribbean lowlands, and the river cutting through that descent is the reason a certain kind of traveller comes to Costa Rica at all. It runs through a deep forested gorge with no road access along most of its length, which means the standard trip is a full day of continuous whitewater between walls of primary forest, with waterfalls dropping into the river and toucans overhead, or a two-day version staying at a lodge on the bank that can only be reached by water. It is regularly rated among the best whitewater runs in the world, and it is accessible to reasonably fit beginners on the standard section while offering considerably harder water above it. The one thing that matters is who you go with: the grade quoted is a real classification, the wet season raises it, and choosing an operator on price alone is the mistake — the health and safety guide sets out the four questions worth asking before booking any adventure activity here. Below the gorge the province flattens into sugar and banana country running towards the coast. Most visitors experience this stretch as the highway to the Caribbean, and it is worth knowing that the same mountain descent gives the province a genuine wet side, quite unlike the dry farmland up around the craters, and that the province of San José next door climbs in the opposite direction into an entirely different set of mountains.