Cartago

Now, back to my tale of dramatic religious conversion. Well, not really. And a word of warning right now — this post is more of a history lesson than the others. The most lamentable tragedy of Cartago, or something like that.

Upon ending up in Cartago, a lively, bustling small city about 25km southeast of San Jose, we found ourselves with a nice balcony view of what turns out to be the holiest Catholic site in Costa Rica (Lonely Planet's words, not ours).

La Basilica de Nuestro Señora de los Angeles is a gorgeous building, about the fourth church of that name to occupy the central square over the past 400 or so years. Cartago sits in the shadow of Volcan Irazu, which has been a thorn in the city's side, burying the place several times over the past few hundred years since it was Costa Rica's original capital. Most recently the volcano erupted in 1963 during JFK's visit to the country and buried the city in a half-meter of ash.

The basilica survived that. It was first destroyed by Irazu in 1635. Then 1723. Earthquakes did major damage to the city and the church in 1841 and again in 1910. There is a black statue of Mary (La Negreta) that has survived all of them, and every August Ticos come from all over the country to pay respects. We went to part of a Sunday night service, which was packed and had wonderful music. I could understand about half of what the priest was saying. Lots of stuff about how great God is and all that.

The town also has a nice set of ruins of a convent they finally decided to stop rebuilding just a few blocks away from the church. Otherwise it is a very friendly, bustling place that extends quite a ways to foothills in the east. We had a wonderful time, in no small part due to a lack of humidity we had not felt since landing two weeks earlier.

All in all, a wonderful 16 hours or so spent and a great reminder of how you can end up in interesting places with no planning or forethought.

Next up, the Caribbean coast and Panama