Lonely Planet Costa Rica

As with all their books, Lonely Planet is thorough for most types of Costa Rica travelers. I found that many of the phone numbers and contact info in the book had changed, but all the recommendations for activites, lodging & resturants where still right on (a quick internet search usually brought up the most recent contact stuff anyway). Don't visit Costa Rica without this, or the most recent Lonely Planet book.

In a huge (600-page) guide to Costa Rica, Lonely Planet's newest edition (8th) includes more information on green travel, the latest hot spots, and many of the old favorites of previous editions. While, at times, preachy about the need to reduce ecological damage in adventure travel (zip lines - bad), the increased emphasis comes at a time when more tourists are looking to both travel and leave as small a footprint behind as possible. Travel suggestions for all types of travelers, from parents with children, to retirees, to the perpetual backpacker always looking for a new place to visit.

Coming to Costa Rica? I live here and periodically renew my guidebooks for all my visiting friends and family. We are also still exploring parts of the country we haven't seen. This is a great comprehensive guidebook no matter what your enthusiasms or budget.

I live in Costa Rica, and this is the best guidebook I've found so far. It can be used by $500 per day globetrotters or penny pinching backpackers. Hotels, places to hang a hammock, luxurious restaurants, places that serve a nice lunch for under US$2.00, local airlines and buslines. Great book.

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.