Adventure Guide to Costa Rica (Adventure Guide to Costa Rica, 4th Ed)

Rating:
Summary: What a fabulous book!
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: What a fabulous book!
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Full of great travel ideas
Review: I really used this book a lot on a recent vacation to Costa Rica. As a first time traveler there I was amazed at the many cool spots to see and this guide pointed me right in every way. Besides good descriptions of where to go, what to do, and how to do it-this guide saved me a lot of time and money. I stayed in some of the more "tico" hotels and was very happy getting close to the people and the Costa Rican experience. I can't say enough about the good recommendations and tips. The color photos and maps are excellent and the authors showed how to do eco-tourism without high impact on the environment, which means a lot in Costa Rica. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: What a guidebook should be!
Review: I took this guidebook and my friend took the one from Lonely Planet and we found we used this one time and time again to find the best places to stay, where to eat, and especially what to do. It helped us choose the best adventure travel, especially whitewater rafting on the Pacuare, and a little bohemian seaside village on the Pacific. I used the Adventure Guide to The Yucatan when we went to Mexico and this series really delivers. It's what a guidebook should be!

Rating:
Summary: What a guidebook should be!
Review: I took this guidebook and my friend took the one from Lonely Planet and we found we used this one time and time again to find the best places to stay, where to eat, and especially what to do. It helped us choose the best adventure travel, especially whitewater rafting on the Pacuare, and a little bohemian seaside village on the Pacific. I used the Adventure Guide to The Yucatan when we went to Mexico and this series really delivers. It's what a guidebook should be!

Rating:
Summary: Not a new edition!
Review: I was disappointed to find that this book is not really a new edition of the guidebook. We used the previous edition (by Harry S. Pariser, now author of Explore Costa Rica), and we thought it much better in terms of travel information and background content. This book is clunky and hard to carry around, the maps aren't too great (compared to other guidebooks), and the color photos are decidedly mediocre! We also think that this should be labeled "first edition" for accuracy.

Rating:
Summary: Great if you really want to get away
Review: My fiancee and I went to Costa Rica and wanted to get away from everything. This book led us to Uvita de Osa (not even mentioned in other books). This book gave us great local information and helped us plan our vacation form start to finish.

Hint: If you are travelling cheap and want a hand getting started in Costa Rica, call John at Safe Passage (www.costaricabustickets.com). You won't regret it!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent guidebook for Adventure
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A great guidebook
Review: The easy-to-read typeface isn't the only thing you'll appreciate about the newest edition of the "Adventure Guide to Costa Rica," though admittedly if you've entered the bifocal phase of your life, you'll wonder why other guidebook publishers haven't followed suit.

The fourth edition of the guide - the last came out in 1996 - is printed by Hunter Publishing of Edison, New Jersey, and sports a fresh modern design and new authors.

British-U.S. couple Bruce and June Conord cut their teeth with Hunter in books on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and have now set their sights southward with a guide to this country that's fun to read and easy to use.

Despite the title, the book is not all rafting, rappelling and rainforests. A full 117 pages of the 386-page volume are introductory and background material covering history, culture, nature and, of course, all the nuts-and-bolts travel essentials.

Useful, descriptive listings of hotels, restaurants, nightlife, shopping and, true to the title, adventure-travel options fill the remaining two-thirds of the guide. But if your adventure tastes lean toward shopping in the artisan town of Sarchí rather than scaling Chirripo you'll find recommendations too.

Peppered throughout the text are quotes from literature, music and popular sayings, from everyone from Gilbert and Sullivan to Martin Luther King and The Beach Boys. All fit the text, and you'll be excused from breaking away from the travel information and thumbing through to see who the Conords will quote next.

Little discrepancies creep into any travel guide. The writer never wants them to, but they happen.

The authors list the nationwide chain of Costa Rican bakeries as "Mus Anni," not realizing the stylized "M" :tween the "S" and "A" on the sign is part of the business name.

The book also recommends locking your passport in your hotel safe and, when you go out, carrying a photocopy that you've made before you leave home. That advice generates much debate in travel circles, a question of balancing authorities' insistence on seeing the original -document with the risk of losing it. In any case, a copy made before departure without that all-important entry stamp into the country would never suffice.

But these matters are small and for-givable in a guide packed -with such solid information.

Tico Times

Rating:
Summary: Not a new edition!
Review: This book was everything we needed in a guidebook, with more then we knew we needed! Honest reviews of hotels and insider tips for restaurants, we used this guide mostly to steer us to some of the most interesting eco adventures in the country. We saved much time and plenty of money with this guide. Wonderful photos too.