Costa Rica

As visitors arrive at this small outcrop of land jutting into the Pacific, the air becomes heavy with humidity, scented with thick vegetation and alive with the calls of birds and monkeys, making it suddenly apparent that this is the tropics. The reason to come here is Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio, one of the most picturesque bits of tropical coast in Costa Rica. If you get bored of cooing at the baby monkeys scurrying in the canopy and scanning for birds and sloths, the turquoise waves and perfect sand provide endless entertainment. However, as it's one of the country's most popular national parks, little Quepos, the once-sleepy fishing and banana village on the park's perimeter, has ballooned with this tourism-based economy, and the road from Quepos to the park is overdeveloped. Despite this, the rainforested hills and the blissful beaches make the park a stunning destination worthy of the tourist hype.

Just 4.3mi (7km) from the entrance to Manuel Antonio, the small, busy town of Quepos serves as the gateway to the national park, as well as a convenient port of call for travelers in need of goods and services. Although the Manuel Antonio area was rapidly and irreversibly transformed following the ecotourism boom, Quepos has largely retained its charm.

The southern coast is the heart and soul of Costa Rica’s Afro-Caribbean community. Jamaican workers arrived in the middle of the 19th century, and stayed to build the railroad and work for the United Fruit corporation. Also in this area, to the interior, are some of the country’s most prominent indigenous groups – cultures that have managed to remain intact despite several centuries’ worth of incursions, first from the Spanish, later from the fruit industry and currently from the globalizing effects of tourism. They principally inhabit the Cocles/Kèköldi, Talamanca Cabécar and Bribrí indigenous territories.

Santa Teresa is a wonderful surfing town, though no longer a secret one, and there are plenty of great places to eat and a modicum of nightlife. The entire area unfurls along one bumpy coastal road that rambles south from Santa Teresa through Playa El Carmen and terminates in the relaxed fishing hamlet of Mal País.

Puerto Limón is the biggest city on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, the capital of Limón province, and a hardworking port that sits removed from the rest of the country. Cruise ships deposit dazed-looking passengers here between October and May, but around these parts, business is primarily measured by truckloads of fruit, not busloads of tourists. Aside from the cruise crowd, Limón can be a good base for adventurous urban explorers.

For most of its history, La Fortuna has been a quiet agricultural town, about 4 miles (6km) from the base of Cerro Arenal (Arenal Hill). In 1968, Arenal erupted violently after nearly 400 years of dormancy and buried the small villages of Pueblo Nuevo, San Luís and Tabacón. Suddenly, tourists from around the world started descending en masse in search of fiery night skies and that inevitable blurry photo of creeping lava. La Fortuna remains one of the top destinations for travelers in Costa Rica, even though the great mountain stopped spewing its molten discharge in 2010.

This flat, steaming stretch of finca-dotted lowlands was once part of the United Fruit Company’s vast banana holdings. Harvests were carried from the plantations down to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí, where they were shipped downriver on boats destined for North America. In 1880 a railway connected rural Costa Rica with the port of Puerto Limón, and Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí became a backwater. Although it’s never managed to recover its status as a transport route, the river has again shot to prominence as one of the premier destinations in the country for kayakers and rafters. With the Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo as its backyard, this is also one of the best regions for wildlife-watching, especially considering how easy it is to get here.

As the closest coastal town to San José, Puntarenas was once Costa Rica’s prosperous, coffee-exporting gateway to the Pacific, and a popular escape for landlocked Ticos. Some still come here on weekends, but during the week the activity along the oceanfront promenade slows to a languid pace – all the better to enjoy the beachfront sodas (inexpensive eateries) and busy market.

The chilled-out village of Manzanillo has long been off the beaten track, even after the paved road arrived in 2003. This little town is still a vibrant outpost of Afro-Caribbean culture and has also remained pristine, thanks to the 1985 establishment of the Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre Gandoca-Manzanillo, which includes the village and imposes strict regulations on regional development.

Vilda och exotiska djur är av intresse för många resenärer. Det är ibland vad som lockar turister till ett speciellt land. Costa Rica är en sådan destination men nu har landets myndigheter satt ner foten – turister ombeds sluta ta selfies med landets djur.