San José & Costa Rica's Central Valley

This guide is based on our full guide to Costa Rica, but it focuses primarily on San Juan and the Central Valley that surrounds it. The book contains all the practical travel information you need places to stay and eat, tourist information resources, travel advice, emergency contacts and more plus condensed sections on history and geography that give you good background knowledge of the destination. Plus, this edition is now in full color throughout. The authors are fascinated with the destination and their passion comes across in the text, which is lively, revealing and a pleasure to read. Sidebars highlight unusual facts and tell of local legends, adding to your travel experience. Detailed town and regional maps make planning day-trips or city tours easy. Adventures covered range from town sightseeing tours and nature watching to sea kayaking and organized jungle excursions. Travelers looking for a more relaxed vacation may want to sign up for language classes or take a course on traditional regional cooking these cultural adventures will introduce you to the people and afford you a truly unique travel experience. We travel to grow – our Adventure Guides show you how. Experience the places you visit more directly, freshly, intensely than you would otherwise – sometimes best done on foot, in a canoe, or through cultural adventures like art courses, cooking classes, learning the language, meeting the people. This can make your trip life-changing, unforgettable. All of the detailed information you need is here about the hotels, restaurants, shopping, sightseeing. But we also lead you to new discoveries, turning corners never before turned, helping you learn about the world in a new way – Adventure Guides make that possible. "I am here in Costa Rica in an internet cafe and had to take the time to tell everyone what a good book this is. It really gave us everything we needed to plan our trip and now that we are here, we use it to find just about everything. If you have not visited Costa Rica yet, get a copy of this book and come on down -- it is fabulous." -- PURA VIDA! "My husband and I just spent our honeymoon in Costa Rica and believe it or not, found this Adventure Guide to be the best resource for exciting things to do and see. It was also accurate for finding hotels that had that little bit of extra ambiance we wanted for romance. We had used Lonely Planet guidebooks on other trips but found this guidebook to be much better. It's easy to use, has lovely photographs, and for rainy nights it made good armchair reading. I heartily recommend the Adventure Guide for a wonderful vacation in Costa Rica." -- Amazon reviewer. "I took off a point for the pedestrian writing and the sub-standard photos. (The numerous quotes struck me as tangential, but I really liked the design ephemera, including the original luggage tag from Hotel Europa, CR's oldest hotel, a nice touch!) Now, on to the good stuff: First off, Bruce & June Conord's "alternative accomodations" was imaginative and indispensable for me, and of course, in the true spirit of "adventure." Secondly, of all the rough-and-tumble excursions they present, my favorite was their walking tour of historical San José. On foot is really the only way to see Costa Rica's one and only capital city." -- Amazon reviewer