Costa Rica (Country Guide)

This guide proved to be invaluable, and saved me a lot of headaches and money. Traveling solo, I rarely make reservations or plans until I actually get there. This is what I did when I got to Costa Rica.

Thanks to this LP guide I can report the following highlights: $7 per night hotel room in San Jose, watching a live volcano (Arenal), spending time in the hot springs at the base of a live volcano, visiting a coffee plantation, hiking through Cloud Forest, and seeing several breathtaking waterfalls. Travelling through Nicaragua to Tortugero to watch the endangered turtles lay eggs was definitely a worthwhile adventure.

A few words of advice: If you are going to visit the rain forest, bring a poncho. It rains in the rain forest. A lot, especially during the rainy season. Perhaps that is why they call it a rain forest. Secondly, visit the local tourist offices in San Jose. I went in looking for some free maps, and got a lot of good advice. It never hurts to have some extra advice about where to go to supplement the guide.

A little dense, it becomes hard to visualize places when planning a trip, but the real value is when you are the ground and moving. Highly recommended.


The only one you'll need   January 4, 2007
Dr D
44 out of 45 found this review helpful

As usual I bought a few guide books and took them all with me. I had the National Geographic, the Tico Times book (Exploring Costa Rica) and the Lonely Planet. Lonely Planet was the bible. All the rest were fluff. As my trip progressed I put the others in the glove compartment and eventually deep in my luggage. The only time I needed anything else was consulting the map (I had a waterproof detailed Costa Rica map which I also recommend) and once when a phone number was misprinted.

As for the preachy tone, yes, I agree, there was a huge element in the book. A lot of it I tended to agree with (I personally think zip line tours are a terrible idea and would make more sense over Manhattan skyscrapers than in one of the world's most precious cloud forests and I also agree that Tamarindo is a hole) so it didn't bother me as much as some of the other reviewers. I wouldn't lower my score by more than half a star for that so they still got 5 stars.


essential   November 13, 2000
13 out of 13 found this review helpful

Lonely Planet is always on the money with their guide books, but the Costa Rica edition is even better than average. It has everything you could conceivably need to know, and if it doesn't have it, it tells you how to find out.

The info. was up to date when I went there, but Costa Rica is such a friendly and easy going place, that it doesn't really matter which hotel or restaurant you eat at. Just ask a friendly local and they will be more than willing to help you out. The only drawback is that some of the maps are not detailed enough if you are planning to take some of the backroads, so get a roadmap in addition to this book. However, that is a small price to pay for such an indispensable little guide.

But remember, it is just a guide, not an instruction manual. You will have a better trip if you discover some stuff out for yourself, rather than going to the first "attraction" that LP suggests and finding 100 other tourists walking around with the same guidebook in their hand!

Oh yeah, and not to mention, it is impossible to destroy an LP guide. Later.


best for low budget   July 13, 2004
14 out of 15 found this review helpful

Lonely Planet tends to cater towards the low budget student traveler and this book is no different. However, I am a budget student traveler and found this book extremely helpfull. My friends and I began refering to it as the "biblia" which means bible. It knows exactly what an adventurous young traveler will want to do. Great guide, wayyyy better than the frommers. Put the frommers down.


THE Go-To Guide for Costa Rica   June 23, 2009
Mark Foster (Iowa, USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

My wife and I recently took a trip to Costa Rica. We packed light, deciding not to even take any checked bags- but we decided it would be worth it to take two guidebooks. After reading reviews online, we bought the Lonely Planet guide, as well as the newest guide from Frommers. After about day one, we barely even opened the Frommers guide. LP had more places, more information about each place, and better recommendations. A fellow traveler had brought a Moon guide, and had to ask to borrow our LP to look up some places he was thinking of visiting.

One caveat, however- we traveled during the rainy season, and didn't have to battle crowds. If you're traveling in the thick of high season, using a non-LP guidebook might be worth it, simply in order to avoid the LP crowds. But for our trip, it was LP all the way.