Costa Rica's National Parks and Preserves: A Visitor's Guide

I chose this book to because it had the most pertinent info on hiking through CR's national parks. I just got back from my trip and I found it very helpful. You would definately need another guide book to supplement it (eg: lonely planet ect.) because it has very few large maps of the area and costa rica can be a confusing place to navigate.

This book is great for what it is. It's much better than most travel guides for specific park info. It includes maps of trails, information on getting to the parks, whether the park itself has accomodations available, and wildlife/ecosystem information for each park. DO NOT use this as your only guide. There is no info on accomodations or restaurants in the area. Also, some of the best places to go in Costa Rica are private reserves, rather than national parks.

Contrary to the last review, we found this book to be extremely useful, and it contained background information and useful maps (such as the area around Sirena ranger station in Corcovado) not contained in other more general guidebooks. Also, there is a considerable amount of natural history information that was not contained in the other books that we had with us, such as the Lonely Planet guide.

(From Planeta Journal) - One of the first guidebooks to focus on the parks and preserves, this book is now in its second edition. It's an invaluable resource for visitors who'd like to get to know Costa Rica's lesser known parks and includes trail directions, dozens of hikes and descriptions of local flora and fauna. The new, second edition of this book includes five new national parks and preserves, plus updated and expanded descriptions of all 40 of Costa Rica's protected areas.

This book made my trip to Costa Rica much more enjoyable than if I hadn't brought it with me. It provides a wealth of information about the natural and human history of the parks and preserves system. I heartily recommend it to anybody traveling to that beautiful country.