The traditional oxcart, or carreta , is Costa Rica’s most famous type of craft. From the mid-nineteenth century, oxcarts were used to transport coffee beans from Costa Rica’s central valley over the mountains to Puntarenas on the Pacific coast, a journey requiring ten to fifteen days. The oxcarts used spokeless wheels, a hybrid between the disc used by the Aztec and the spoked wheel introduced by the Spanish, to cut through the mud without becoming bogged down. In many cases, oxcarts were a family's only means of transport and often served as a symbol of social status. The tradition of painting and decorating oxcarts started in the early twentieth century. Originally, each region of Costa Rica had its own particular design, enabling the identification of the driver’s origin by the painted patterns on the wheels. By the beginning of the twentieth century, flo...
