The Cambroneros
The story of the Cambroneros starts in the late 1800’s with Adelino Cambronero Campos and Aurelia Gamboa Hildalgo, known to their family and locals as don Nino and Doña Lela.
In some ways, the Cambroneros were like most frontier families, living in a simple wood casa and surviving on the land and the opportunities that the movement of settlers and merchants offered. In other ways however, the Cambroneros and the Casa Cambronero have become icons of Costa Rica’s Wild West.
For many years, Casa Cambronero was a regular rest stop, a sesteo, for the comerciantes to rest and feed their livestock.
Whether hauling tobacco by mule, coffee by oxcart, or tourists by bus, the trip from the Central Valley to Pacific Coast was long, slow and very hard.
The comerciantes would release their livestock on the Cambronero grounds while they slept in their oxcarts in the generous shade of the Higuerone trees. The guests would eat at a big table in the dining room where Doña Lela would cook up spreads typically consisting of rice, beans, egg, cheese, tortillas, and on occasion, meat.
By necessity don Nino was a man of many trades and talents. He shoed livestock, traded cattle, operated a grocery store, and even cut hair to support his wife and seven children. At the grocery store he sold the basic staples required by the locals including bread, rice, beans, sugar, coffee, and soap as well as beer and liquors.
He would haul the goods by sack from San Ramón and made a good living since there was no other grocery store in the village.
Over the years, the legacy of Casa Cambronero and the Cambronero family grew and they apparently acquired some degree of wealth.
Some have since moved on to other parts of Costa Rica and Latin America however their place in the history of Costa Rica’s Wild West remains intact as Costa Rica’s Original Rest Stop.
