Alajuela

Alajuela is a province in the north of Costa Rica. It reaches from the west of the Central Valley, where its capital, the city of Alajuela, stands, to the lowlands along the border with Nicaragua. Juan Santamaria International Airport (SJO), the country's main airport, is in the province, just outside the city.

The airport is named after Juan Santamaria, a drummer from Alajuela who, according to tradition, set fire to the enemy's stronghold at Rivas, in Nicaragua, on 11 April 1856, during the war against William Walker, and died in the attack. He is Costa Rica's national hero, and the Museo Historico Cultural Juan Santamaria in Alajuela carries his name.

Alajuela holds two of the country's best-known volcanoes. Poas Volcano National Park protects an active volcano with one of the largest craters in the world, about 1,320 metres across. Arenal Volcano rises above the town of La Fortuna, in the canton of San Carlos; after its eruption of 1968 it stayed active until 2010 and is quiet today, with La Fortuna Waterfall and Arenal Volcano National Park around it.

The towns of the Central Valley keep their own traditions. Sarchi is the craft centre of the painted oxcart, part of the oxherding and oxcart traditions that UNESCO lists for Costa Rica. In Zarcero, pine and cypress hedges clipped into figures since 1964 frame the church of San Rafael, and Grecia's church of Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, consecrated in 1896, is made of metal brought from Belgium.

The north is lowland and water. The Cano Negro wildlife refuge, near the border with Nicaragua, was declared a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention in 1991, and in the north-west the Rio Celeste flows through Tenorio Volcano National Park, which Alajuela shares with Guanacaste.