San José, the Central Valley & Arenal

Before the Spanish arrived, the Central Valley and its surrounding slopes were home to chiefdoms linked to the cultures further south. The largest surviving site is Guayabo, near Turrialba in Cartago province, where stone-paved causeways, mound foundations and aqueducts were built by a community that had abandoned the site before the conquest.

Spanish settlement of the interior began with Juan Vázquez de Coronado, who founded Cartago in 1563, and Cartago was the colonial capital for about 250 years. The valley was a place of small farms rather than great estates. In the 18th century new towns grew to the west — Heredia, San José and Alajuela — and after independence in 1821 rivalry between the conservative old capital and the more liberal western towns ended in a brief civil war in 1823, after which the capital moved to San José.

Coffee transformed the valley from the 1820s. Its export wealth paid for San José's Teatro Nacional, opened in 1897, and ox-drawn carts carried the beans to the Pacific port of Puntarenas. Alajuela gave the country its national hero, the drummer boy Juan Santamaría, killed in 1856 fighting the American filibuster William Walker. In the 1948 civil war the valley was the main battleground, and on 1 December 1948 José Figueres announced the abolition of the army at the Bellavista barracks in San José, a decision written into the 1949 constitution; the building now houses the National Museum. Irazú's eruptions of 1963 to 1965 covered the valley in ash, while Arenal's sudden eruption in July 1968 destroyed the villages of Tabacón and Pueblo Nuevo on its western side and killed 87 people.

The Central Valley is the cradle of the tico identity that the rest of the country is measured against: the careful courtesy, the use of usted even with children and pets, and the valley farmer, the labriego, idealised in national literature and song. Josefinos, the people of San José, are teased elsewhere for being hurried and formal; people from Cartago are known for their piety.

Cartago is the centre of Costa Rican Catholicism. The small dark statue of the Virgin of the Angels, La Negrita, is said to have been found by a young mixed-race woman in 1635, and every year around 2 August an estimated two million pilgrims walk to her basilica from across the country, some on their knees for the last stretch. Alajuela celebrates Juan Santamaría on 11 April, and San José's Christmas season brings a festival of lights.

Sarchí, in Alajuela province, is the home of the painted oxcart, the carreta, decorated with geometric patterns and flowers in bright enamel; the oxherding and oxcart traditions of Costa Rica are on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, and oxcart parades are still held in the valley towns. Coffee culture runs deep too: the harvest from about November to February once drew whole families, including schoolchildren, into the fields, and many valley homes still brew with the cloth chorreador.

Most Costa Ricans live in the Greater Metropolitan Area, a continuous spread of towns across the valley floor with more than two million people. San José itself has around 350,000 people in its central canton, and Alajuela, Heredia and Cartago are each a short bus ride away; La Fortuna and Ciudad Quesada in the northern lowlands are the main towns beyond the mountains.

The valley holds the country's government, universities, hospitals and most of its industry. Free-trade zones around Heredia, Alajuela and Cartago host medical-device makers and service centres for international companies, which have become the biggest exporters. Coffee still grows on the slopes of Poás, Barva and Irazú, though suburbs have eaten into the farms, and dairy herds graze the higher pastures. Around Cartago the volcanic soils grow much of the country's potatoes, onions and vegetables. In the north, around La Fortuna, the economy rests on tourism, cattle and crops such as pineapple.

The working day starts early, with coffee and gallo pinto before seven, and the valley's traffic jams are a constant complaint; a commuter train and bus reforms have only partly eased them. Rising housing costs, crime in some districts and the pressures on the public health service are the everyday political issues.

Valley cooking is the national cooking at its plainest. Breakfast is gallo pinto with eggs, sour cream and corn tortillas, and the midday casado is eaten at sodas across the city. San José's Mercado Central, open since 1880, is the place to try it, along with the market's small counters selling arroz con pollo, rice with chicken, and sopa negra, a black-bean soup with a boiled egg.

The valley's farms supply the rest of the table. Cartago grows potatoes, carrots and chayote, the pale-green squash that turns up in picadillos, finely chopped vegetable hashes with a little meat that are served on tortillas. Tamales wrapped in banana leaf are made by families together in December, and the pejibaye, the palm fruit sold boiled at street stalls with mayonnaise, is a valley snack. Turrialba, in Cartago province, gives its name to a fresh, mild white cheese.

Coffee is the pride of the region. Heredia's farms and the high slopes of Tarrazú, south of San José, produce washed Arabica sold abroad at a premium, and café con leche and a sweet bread such as the rosquilla or a slice of tres leches cake are the afternoon ritual. Around La Fortuna, lodges serve tilapia and trout from local farms, and roadside stands sell fresh pineapple.

San José is small and best seen on foot: the Teatro Nacional and its café, the gold ornaments of the Museo del Oro Precolombino beneath the Plaza de la Cultura, the National Museum in the old Bellavista barracks, and the Mercado Central. Alajuela, near the airport, has its park of mango trees and the Juan Santamaría museum.

North of Alajuela, Poás volcano has a steaming active crater, reached by a short walk from the car park; the nearby La Paz waterfall gardens have trails past a series of falls. Heredia's coffee towns sit on the slopes of Barva, where farms such as Café Britt run tours, and Braulio Carrillo National Park covers the forested mountains towards the Caribbean. In Cartago, Irazú, at about 3,430 metres, has a grey summit of craters, while the city's basilica and the roofless ruins of the Santiago Apóstol church, abandoned after the 1910 earthquake, stand in the centre. The Orosi valley below holds the colonial church of San José de Orosi, the Ujarrás ruins, the Cachí reservoir and Tapantí National Park; Guayabo lies near Turrialba, where rafters set off on the Pacuare and Reventazón rivers. From the far south of San José province, trails climb Cerro Chirripó, the country's highest peak, whose summit marks the meeting point of San José, Cartago and Limón provinces.

Across the mountains, the Arenal volcano rises to about 1,630 metres above La Fortuna. Arenal Volcano National Park has trails over old lava flows, the town's waterfall drops into a jungle pool, and hot springs fed by volcanic heat line the road west. Hanging bridges cross the rainforest canopy, and Lake Arenal lies beyond the dam. To the north, the Caño Negro wetlands near the Nicaraguan border draw birdwatchers.