Zarcero

“Worth timing for the last hour of daylight”

Zarcero sits at 1,736 metres on the highland road between San José and Ciudad Quesada, and its central park is unlike any other in Costa Rica. Since 1964, a single gardener named Evangelista Blanco — and his successors — have shaped the cypress trees lining the park into a continuous series of arched tunnels, animal figures, and geometric forms that now constitute one of the most distinctive public spaces in Central America. The main church faces the park across the standard colonial plaza arrangement, but the topiary transforms the space into something more like a green corridor than a town square. The surrounding municipality is highland agriculture — potatoes, dairy, peaches, and the locally famous café chino, a sweetened corn drink — at altitudes where the mornings are cold enough for breath to be visible. The town itself is unremarkable outside the park; the park itself is genuinely unlike anything else.