The Magical Santa Cruz Cheese Festival Of Turrialba

Costa Rica's Largest Cheese...Ever.

Cheese, cheese and more cheese.  The Santa Cruz Feria Del Queso (Santa Cruz Cheese Festival) is perhaps Costa Rica's greatest undiscovered culinary event for any tourist who does not mind severe constipation.  It is a month of dairy delight culminating in the final Sunday unveiling of Costa Rica's largest cheese.  Ever.  It will probably remain undiscovered by most tourists because, even with an automobile, getting to this pretty village in the scenic mountains is a real bitch.  The logistics of traveling in Costa Rica  -a country which has only recently discovered street signs- figured importantly into this trip.

The festival, like all diary products, has its origin in the introduction of foreign cultures.

Costa Rica frequently gets called, "The Switzerland Of Central America," a title which it attributes to its relative stability, prosperity and neutrality as a country in a region of the world that is often known for poverty, drug cartels, military coups and kidnappings.  This safety is debatable, but Costa Rica does resemble Switzerland in a more concrete aspect.  Its mountainous interior resembles the green, verdant rolling topography that we typically associate with that little, neutral, secret-bank-account European country.

These udders are going places

The geographical resemblance is most obvious in the providence of Turrialba.  The region sits at a high elevation, which causes a year-round cool, rainy climate that contrasts with Costa Rica's reputation for sunny beaches.  In the 1850s this climate attracted Spanish immigrants from the La Mancha region (yeah, the Don Quixote place), where they have a long history of dairy production.  The immigrants domesticated some cows, developed farms and quickly built a reputation for the best dairy products in Costa Rica.

While taking the bus on winding Highway 230, the orderly checkerboard farm plots, green rolling hills, tall haystacks and grazing cows made me recall previous summer trips through Switzerland and southern Germany.  My Argentinian friend and I had looked for a big event to finish her Costa Rican vacation, and the "Santa Cruz Feria Del Queso" came up that weekend.  Neither of us were lactose intolerant, so we booked a night at the Casa De Lis Hostel in Turrialba and planned out our travel route with a little help from my roommate, who is from Turrialba.

1. From San Jose take a bus to Cartago.  There are a few options, but Lumaca is the easiest choice. What's most important is that you arrive before 10:00am.

2. Gemon operates bus lines from Cartago to Santa Cruz de Turrilba.  The first one leaves at 10am.  There is another bus that departs at noon.  Leave any later than that and you will miss most of the festival.

3. Most important: indicate to the bus driver that you want to stop at "Santa Cruz de Turrialba."  If you don't speak Spanish, just shout "Santa Cruz, Feria Del Queso!" and make loud "MOOO!" cow sounds.  The driver will drop you off at the highway entrance that is about a quarter mile walk from the fair grounds.  It will be muddy.

Santa Cruz Cheese Festival Fairgrounds

When we stepped off the bus, we congratulated ourselves on bringing jackets and umbrellas.  The mist that we saw coating the green mountains gave the scenery a dreamy quality from inside the bus.  Outside the bus, it simply felt cold and wet.  Fortunately, the majority of the Cheese Festival is held under a giant shed and large tents.  They know their climate, and the temperature heats up quickly once the band starts playing.

Turrialba Spanish

The Cheese Festival fairgrounds are essentially divided into two parts: the stands and the restaurants.  The free-standing tents are where the farmers and vendors sell packaged dairy products and various traditional knick-knacks.  The permanent, tin-roofed shed covers the temporary kitchens where the villagers cook up fresh meals.  Underneath the happy buzz of people eating, drinking and talking there's a constant background sound of mooing from the dozens of cows being housed in a large shed just down the hill.

Before visiting the Cheese Festival, my knowledge of dairy products was pretty much restricted to milk and cheese.  The farmers of Santa Cruz blew that door wide open.  I had learned a lot of Costa Rican Spanish and my Argentinian friend could easily read the menus, but the local Turrialban expressions used for the dishes gave us no clue of what we would eat.  Rosquillos?  Papin de Leche?  Gallos de Ternero?  Leche Volcanica...

Volcanic Milk?? Sounds painful.

The easiest thing to do was to try everything.

Tortillas de Queso (Cheese Tortillas) looked like the most straightforward thing to start with.  It was simply that: a thick piece of bread made with flour and white cheese mixed together.  It tastes fine by itself, and even better with a spoonful of mild salsa or light sour cream on top.  The best way to wash this down is with a glass of Volcanic Milk.  The "volcanic" part comes from the shot of rum and coffee they add to the milk.  Think of it as a Tropical White Russian (or El Lebowski Grande.)

Cheese Tortillas with Volcanic Milk

Chicarrones De Queso: addictive

Desserts made up the majority of our meal.  Papin de Leche (Milk Daddy?) is a type of flan, but fresher thanks to our bovine neighbors.  Chicarrones de Queso (Cheese Chicarrones) worried me at first.  I imagined Mexican chicarrones, which are basically pork rinds.  What I got was similar to crack cocaine, but way more addictive.  Take white Turrialba cheese and then fry it in caramel.  As a red-blooded American, I believe anything is better fried.  I ordered two packages of it and finished the first one in 10 minutes.


After eating we went to the vendors' tents to see what we could take home.  Almost all the products were fresh from the farm; the cheeses squeaked and the sour creams practically dripped from their bags.  I purchased a bag of sour cream, some sweet buns, a liter of rum-and-milk cocktail called rompope, and a block of smooth, white Turrialba cheese dotted with red and green peppers.  My Argentinian friend had a little more difficulty.  Since she was boarding a plane soon, she needed something that could pass through customs easily.  Eventually we found a vendor who sold their cheese in sealed, air-locked plastic bags.

I got constipated just looking at it.

In the history of culinary events it was epic, but as usual the specter of Costa Rica's confusing public transportation reared its ugly head.  Despite a clearly-posted online schedule, and confirmation from the locals, the bus we planned to take back to Turrialba failed to appear at 5:30pm.  This was not unusual.  At 6pm the bus failed to appear again, but we were still laughing about Latinos and their chronic lateness.  When the bus failed to appear 15 minutes later, and continued to do so for the next hour, we became concerned.

We were not simply naive tourists unaware of local practices.  Ten other Costa Ricans were stranded with us on the side of the road, all complaining about the atrocious state of their country's public transportation.

It ended well.  After nearly two hours of hoping and wondering and waiting, a bus --which was not the one we wanted-- arrived to take us to a nearby small town.  We were still nearly 10 miles from Turrialba and it was nightfall.  Luckily, some of the other stranded Costa Ricans had friends in the small town who kindly gave us a ride to our hostel in Turrialba.  We dined and drank with the other hostel guests and soon passed out, completely exhausted.

The followed morning we made a dairy breakfast out of the sweet buns, sour cream, cheese and alcoholic rompope.  I was not able to shit for the next three days.  This is a small price to pay for visiting the magical Santa Cruz Cheese Festival of Costa Rica.

Sweet Buns, Sour Cream and Rompope