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WHERE TO GO |
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Though everyone passes through it, hardly anyone falls in love with
San José , Costa Rica's underrated capital. Often dismissed as an ugly
urban sprawl, the city enjoys a dramatic setting amid jagged mountain
peaks, plus some excellent cafés and restaurants, leafy parks, a lively
university district and a good arts scene. The surrounding Valle Central
is the country's agricultural heartland, and also home to several of its
finest volcanoes, including the huge crater of Volcán Poás and the
largely dormant Volcán Irazú, a strange lunar landscape high above the
regional capital of Cartago.
Though nowhere in the country is further than nine hours' drive from San
José, the far north and the far south are less visited than other
regions. The broad alluvial plains of the Zona Norte are often
overlooked, despite featuring active Volcán Arenal, which spouts and
spews within sight of the friendly tourist hangout of Fortuna, affording
arresting night-time scenes of blood-red lava illuminating the sky. Off-the-beaten-path
travellers and serious hikers will be happiest in the rugged Zona Sur ,
home to Mount Chirripó, the highest point in the country. Further south,
on the outstretched feeler of the Osa Peninsula, Parque Nacional
Corcovado protects the last significant area of tropical wet forest on
the Pacific coast of the isthmus and is probably the best destination in
the country for walkers - and also one of the few places where you have
a fighting chance of seeing some of the wildlife for which Costa Rica is
famed.
In the northwest, the cattle-ranching province of Guanacaste is often
called "the home of Costa Rican folklore", and sabanero (cowboy) culture
dominates here, with exuberant rag-tag rodeos and large cattle
haciendas. Limón province, on the Caribbean coast, is the polar opposite
to traditional ladino Guanacaste, home to the descendants of the Afro-Caribbeans
who came to Costa Rica at the end of the nineteenth century to work on
the San José-Limón railroad - their language (Creole English),
Protestantism and the West Indian traditions remain relatively intact to
this day.
Close to the Pacific coast , Monteverde has become the country's number-one
tourist attraction, pulling in the visitors who flock here to walk
trails through some of the last remaining cloudforest in the Americas.
Further down the coast is the popular beach of Manuel Antonio, with its
picture-postcard ocean setting, plus the equally pretty but far less
touristed beaches of Sámara and Nosara on the Nicoya Peninsula.
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