Costa Rica Highlights
San José
By the end of the 19th century, San José was booming from the profits of its coffee exports. It was the third city in the world to have public electric lighting, one of the first to have public telephones, the first in Central America, perhaps in all of Latin America, to initiate free and compulsory education for all of its citizens, and the first to allow girls to attend high school. The National Theatre is probably the most beautiful building in the country and its coffee shop is a favourite place, quiet, elegant, yet alive.
Cartago
Cartago, once the centre of Costa Rican culture, is still her religious centre. The enormous Basilica de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles (Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels), a Byzantine structure that dominates the landscape for miles, was built in honour of Costa Rica's patron saint, La Negrita.
Irazú Volcano National Park
From the 3,355-metre summit of Volcán Irazú it is possible on a clear day to see both the Caribbean and the Pacific. Visitors can go to the top ridge, walk along the rim of the main crater and look across an other-worldly landscape consisting of a brilliant green lake and black-and-grey slopes, punctuated with plumes of white steam jetting into the air, escaping from fissures in the rock.
Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio
This is Costa Rica's most famous beach area, composed of three strands of magnificent white sand, fringed by jungle on one side, the Pacific on the other. The beaches are clean and wide. Above them are tall cliffs covered in thick jungle vegetation. The park is one of the few places in the country where the primary forest comes down to the water's edge in places, sometimes allowing bathers to swim in the shade.
Playa Jacó
Jacó Beach has a party-time, beach town ambience, with plenty of cold beer and hammocks slung between coconut palms. It has no shortage of amusements: horses, bikes, scooters and kayaks are available for rent.
Monteverde Cloud Forest
More visitors are attracted to Monteverde Cloud Forest than to any other forest reserve in Costa Rica, and usually for one purpose: to sight the Resplendent Quetzal, the most colourful and spectacular bird in the tropics.
Playas del Coco
Playas del Coco is a honky-tonk little town of open-air bars, tiny restaurants, beachfront hotels, promenades, and teenagers on holiday. Radios from the seafood restaurants help to put people in the mood with infectious Latin salsa and raucous rock 'n' roll.
Tortuguero
Travel on the Tortuguero canals through the area north of Limón has been likened to a trip on the African Queen, or to floating dreamily down the Amazon. It is certainly one of the most wonderfully lyrical trips to be taken anywhere. As you sail amidst the fragrance of white ginger blossoms, lavender water hyacinths, and the ylang ylang flower, there is a tranquillity that soothes all your cares away.
Parque Nacional Corcovado
One of Corcovado's blessings is its inaccessibility. It is a park for those visitors who are prepared to make a considerable commitment in time and energy. Covering 40,000 hectares, Corcovado National Park is an important sanctuary of biological diversity and endangered wildlife, dominating the rugged Osa Peninsula. It is the site of many of Costa Rica's most significant environmental conflicts. Wild animals live among tall trees that are draped with vines and lianas, supported by massive buttress roots, on a forest floor teeming with life.
Isla del Coco
The largest uninhabited island in the world. Wafer Bay and Chatham Bay offer a way to tie up and gain entry to explore the island, which is crowned with a thick, coniferous forest full of springs and rivers. Cliffs that tower over 100 meters around the island are covered with incredibly thick tropical vegetation, with hundreds of magnificent waterfalls plummeting straight down to the sea.
Parque Nacional La Amistad
La Amistad (which means Friendship) has been declared a Biosphere Reserve and a World Patrimony site because of the diversity of its flora and fauna, and because of its great scientific value. Over half of La Amistad has yet to be explored. Hiking near the Las Tablas Forest Reserve is safe and rewarding, but only experienced tropical trekkers should venture into the interior.