DK Eyewitness Costa Rica

By far the best Costa Rica travel guide and one of the best of the whole DK Eyewitness Travel Guides series.(I consulted all other guides whilst travelling in Costa Rica for a month)The main contributor,Christopher Baker,is an excellent writer,and manages to capture the Soul of Costa Rica--a unique country with 7 distinct ecosystems.The specially inserted chapters,with well-chosen photos for clarification, on the wild-life, flora and landscapes of the country,are in themselves a jewel worth the whole book.The maps at the beginning of each area/chapter, in which the main attractions are clearly picked-out and numbered ( a unique and unmatched feature of all DK Guides)help the traveller to choose easily what he prefers to see.Actually,the writer himself has already done the choosing for you,by omitting the huge amount of information about uninteresting places other guides overload their readers with.If you are planning to travel to Costa Rica...or if you are a...couch-traveller,buy it,without a second thought!

I love eyewitness books due to the pictures and descriptions of the areas I;m interested in. Very informative!

Purchased several different guides & found this one to be more complete. Many visuals as well as coverage of most all areas of the country.

This Eyewitness Guide is devoted to Costa Rica and is a pretty typical entry in the series. It opens with a discussion of the history and culture of the country as well as an overview of some of its more prominent characteristics such as beaches, weather, and wildlife. Next, there are a number of sections detailing geographic regions such as San Jose, Central Highlands, Central Pacific, Guanacaste & Northern Nicoya, the Northern Zone, the Caribbean, and the Southern Zone. Each area gets 13 pages or so of descriptions and photographs. Listings for hotels, restaurants, shopping, entertainment, and outdoor activities are presented in the back of the book rather than with the geographic region they pertain to. Finally, there is a section discussing practical information of various kinds for travelers. The great thing about this Eyewitness Guide to Costa Rica is that it offers over 650 photographs to help bring a gorgeous country to life. Rather than picking which places you most want to visit based on imagining them from descriptions, you can see them for yourself here. The problem with this guide is that its 288 pages are dominated by those photographs rather than detailed descriptions of hotels, restaurants, activities, etc. It simply isn't possible to put comprehensive detail into a few hundred pages when you already have more than 2 photos on average for each and every page. I would recommend buying this guide, but I would also recommend purchasing the Frommer's Costa Rica 2008 (Frommer's Complete) to help plan the details of your trip. This is a great starting point, but you'll definitely want a resource with more information before you're done.

We used this guide in our recent trip to Costa Rica. In this review I will tell you the benefits of the formatting style of this guide; the strengths of the guide, and then a few weaknesses where more information would have been helpful. I will end the review by relaying my assessment of the finest resource in Costa Rica and recommendations regarding use of the guide for travel in Costa Rica. The guide is formatted very well, as are all the Eyewitness Travel Guides. They give you basic cultural, historic and political background. They then give detailed section by section analysis of geographic areas where they identify the major points of interest and then show you a small photograph related to the item with a short basic informative description. The guide also gives more detailed two page essays with drawings and photos for major points of interest. The guide ends with traveler information on hotels, restaurants, transportation and safety. Now I would like to tell you about the strengths of the guide in describing Costa Rica. We were interested in spending time on the Pacific beaches and visiting the lowland rainforrests. However we also wanted to spend time seeing the volcanoes in the center of the country and visiting the high mountain cloud forests. We drove from San Jose to Manuel Antonio National Park and resort area. We stayed 3 nights in a beach hotel which was very basic but within a 5 minute walk of the beautiful Manuel Antonio beaches. These beaches have a mixed very fine sand of white silica and black volcanic pumice that is perfect for walking, relaxing, and playing. The Manuel Antonio Park is a must see attraction if you are visiting the Pacific coast. Giant varied bromeliads weight down vines and trees. Giant trees rise above the jungle to the light, buttressed by high bladed roots.The beaches within the park are excellent and the hikes to Punta Cathedral and other lookouts are worth the climb. Only 600 people are allowed to visit every day so go early. Wear or carry your bathing suit. To get to the park entrance you may have to wade through a creek in dry season. We saw spider monkeys and a family of Capuchin monkeys. The Capuchins are amazing with their pink faces trimmed with white fur and their agile black bodies and tails. We saw iguanas of every size as well as two sloths hanging from vines. We were warned not to drink local water but we drank it for 8 days while in Costa Rica without problems. To get to the park you have drive for 3.5 hours from San Jose through the mountains on twisting roads. You then drive on a long road that parallels the beach through the towns of Jaco, Puntarenas, and Quepos. The evenings cooled down to around 69 degrees, which were perfect for sleeping under a ceiling fan. The beach and park warmed up to 86 at mid-day. Driving along the beach roads you see African oil palms growing in fields that once held bananas before the Sigatoka fungus wiped them all out. One day we explored Playa Seca. We f