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October 2001

Arenal and Monteverde

David Aaronson
2005-09-25 15:05:52

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There are several choices available for driving from San Jose to the area around the Arenal Volcano. We chose to take the La Fortuna route (which goes through the town of La Fortuna). Our first side trip was to the artesan's village of Sarchi. Possibly Costa Rica's best known tourist trap. Sarchi is primarily a woodworking center and from what we saw of the hand-crafted furniture for sale in the area, it did appear to be very high quality. Rocking chairs are a little tough to take home on the plane though so we settled for a few souvenir items and left. Sometimes when travelling you come across those thoroughly unexpected places that really do make the 'getting there' part of the adventure. Zarcero is one of those places. High above the central valley after more than hour of driving through thick fog, we found ourselves here.

Every Costa Rican town, village, and city we visited had certain characteristics in common. There is invariably a central park. Facing the park will be the town's cathedral, and likely the post office. Just down the road will be the school and somewhere nearby will be the soccer field. After that individuality can be added. Zarcero's variation on the theme takes place in the central park which has become an elaborate topiary garden (1). There's no particular motif here just the whims of the one man who's responsible for it all.

In Zarcero the school is next door and was in recess during our visit so the park was filled with children. Many more could be heard than seen given the complexities of the foliage. It all has a certain Dr. Seuss quality to it. We spent a little while wandering through it before continuing on to Arenal.

Zarcero is about at the peak of the road over the central mountains. Continuing to the north the road drops into a huge flat valley which leads up to the very base of Arenal. Once in the valley it's an easy drive but crossing ...