Photos

Normally you see the Carreta Tipica, or Traditional Painted Ox Carts of Costa Rica during fairs, in tourist places and of course in the souvernir stores, but someone may think their use belongs to the past. Actually you could find that people keep using it, like this boy cuting grass to feed their cows.

The Ox Carts where really important for the Costa Rican economy, because they where used to move all the products, and specially the export coffee from the plantation fields located in the Central Valley, to the Beneficio (the processing plant) and from there to the ports. The strenous journey of moving several dry coffee sacks with the oxcarts ussually took many days, traversing the mountains and jungles in large groups of oxcarts in a single line, sometimes with cobble stone roads but normally with deep mud... from this comes the say... Arrieros somos y en el camino andamos...