Rating: 
Summary: Not up to the LP standard
Review: As a big fan of the LP series, I was really looking forward to this guide to Costa Rica. Unfortunately, it fell short in many areas.1) The author did not research things very well. He continually uses phrases like "nice-looking hotel", "the restaurant appears well-liked", etc. Essentially meaningless, content-free info on places. 2) The info is somewhat out-of-date. Several places I stayed at had changed their price / format / philosophy, well before publication of the book. 3) The book should have been called "Birding Through Costa Rica". It's great that the author has a hobby, but it's quite obvious that he should have been spending more time researching sites and accomodations while he was hunting down the brown pelican for the eleventeenth time. While the wildife section and descriptions were interesting, the author's obsession with birds really gets annoying, especially when it is at the cost of more beneficial info. 4) In this guide the author uses the first person singular perspective more than any other LP guide. It's really unnerving. Yeah Rob, it's great that you met Dave the bartender in Domenical, but I'd much rather know where the gas station is, BIG GUY. As usual, this edition of the LP will no doubt become the "default" reference guide to Costa Rica, but in this case it's not because the author did a great research job. It's not bad, but greatly diminished by relying on one slightly bent birder as the main source of travel info. My buddy and I made sure we tried to wheelie our motorcycles over the gullet of any birds on the road as a result. LP still rules, I just hope Rob the Birder doesn't write many more editions.
Rating: 
Summary: THE ONLY BOOK YOU WILL NEED!
Review: Costa Rica is a beautiful and friendly country and this book and a map were my only tools in traveling with my family. Wonderful source of information in which we used to travel from SanJose to Arenal to the Pacific Coast to the wonderful rainforest of Monterverde.....Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Simply NOT for budget travel!
Review: Having just returned from Costa Rica I would like to stress on a view previously heard here. If you plan on any kind of BUDGET cuts, e.g:
- take buses
- sleep in budget accomodation
- and/or backpack
then this is REALLY NOT the book for you.
I will not elaborate more on what the book does contain (see below) but will stress that it does NOT contain crucuial information on the above categories.
Many buses are missing / wrong. Budget accomodations (up to 20$/person) are very poorly researched. Simply no way to distinguish a dump from good value.
Two bold examples:
* Puntarenas was found to be every bit the seedy scary port town Puerto Limon is. If you read LP you'd think this was Punta del Este, Uruguay (a resort town).
* Read 15 pages of blurb on Tortuguero and when you finish them you realize you still have NO CLUE as to HOW to get there apart from entering the Hilton asking for a 250$ tour.
And I could go on...
Options: Moon or Footprint costa rica handbooks. They simply MUST be better...
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: Hi, I am working at ILISA, Spanish Language Institute in San Jose, Costa Rica and I just want to let you know that this book helps our students a lot by making travel plans and by getting their way around in Costa Rica. Thanks!
Rating:
Summary: Great Guide; Excellent vacation
Review: I ended up a few weeks and travelling through parts of Central America. This travel guide is one of the ones I took with me, and I highly recommend it. This guide proved to be invaluable, and saved me a lot of headaches and money. Traveling solo, I rarely make reservations or plans until I actually get there. This is what I did when I got to Costa Rica. Thanks to this LP guide I can report the following highlights: $7 per night hotel room in San Jose, watching a live volcano (Arenal), spending time in the hot springs at the base of a live volcano, visiting a coffee plantation, hiking through Cloud Forest, and seeing several breathtaking waterfalls. Travelling through Nicaragua to Tortugero to watch the endangered turtles lay eggs was definitely a worthwhile adventure. A few words of advice: If you are going to visit the rain forest, bring a poncho. It rains in the rain forest. A lot, especially during the rainy season. Perhaps that is why they call it a rain forest. Secondly, visit the local tourist offices in San Jose. I went in looking for some free maps, and got a lot of good advice. It never hurts to have some extra advice about where to go to supplement the guide. A little dense, it becomes hard to visualize places when planning a trip, but the real value is when you are the ground and moving. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A great book
Review: I found this book very helpfull, The lonely planet series has guided me thru Costa Rica several times. I don't know what i would have done without it. It helped us find well priced hotels and, convined me to go to Monteverde and that was one of my favorite parts of the trip.
I highly recomend this book for all travelers
Rating:
Summary: I'm sure it was good once upon a time...
Review: I have used Lonely Planet guides for the past 8 years during my travels everywhere from Cambodia to New Zealand to Japan, and they have yet to disappoint... until now. I'm sure that this book was once good, but it was written nearly two years ago, and Costa Rica has changed so much since then. With the recent real estate/construction boom, this book is simply too old. I spent a month in Costa Rica (Nov./Dec. 2001) and found that in many towns HALF of the hotels and restaurants mentioned in this book no longer exist or are under new names/ownership. Also, there is a large number of new lodging places that have been built in the past years that LP excludes. Many of these are the best deals in town. For the ones that it does include, prices are slightly outdated (although not horrible). Bus schedules are less than accurate (understandable for a two year old book). Especially in remote places like Corcovado, this book was of little help and in certain cases genuinely misleading about ways to get around and the distance of certain extended hikes. Like I said, I use LP books all the time and they are usually great. I'm sure a 5th edition would fix 90% of the problems with this book, but until then I would strongly recommend a different publication. My friend had the Moon Handbooks guide (which I had never used before) and it was significantly better than the LP in all aspects but maps. My recommendation would be to get that book (or a different one if you know that it is newly printed) and a DETAILED map of the country. That should treat you fine until the 5th edition LP comes out. Enjoy your trip!
Rating:
Summary: Great guide to Costa Rica
Review: I just got back from a 10 day trip in Costa Rica. We used this book both before and during the trip, and it was fantastic. The information was unfailingly complete and accurate, the advice offered was excellent, and I don't think I'll ever take another trip out of the country without a Lonely Planet guide. At almost every stop, someone asked to borrow it, and many of the other travellers we met had their own copy.
Rating:
Summary: Lonely Planet Costa Rica
Review: I loved this book! I was able to get around Costa Rica for a month with all the great information provided by this book. It is organized in a way that makes it very practicle and easy to use while traveling. The author has a great style of writing and I laughed often at his sense of humor. I HIGHLY recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good coverage of Costa Rica, but misses some important point
Review: I used Lonely Planet on my six week trip to Costa Rica in early summer. There was very good coverage of hotels and restaurants in all price ranges, excellent maps and background information about the culture and history of the country. The author didn't say much about the Children's Rain Forest, next to the Monteverde Cloud Forest, which was a mistake I felt. I saw more Quetzals and other wildlife in the Children's rainforest than in any other park in Costa Rica. Obviously not well publicised, I was the only person in the park the entire day! Also, the author encouraged traveling to Puerto Viejo. While I was there, an American woman was gang raped and beaten by five men. Overall, it felt dangerous and I would caution other women traveling to that area.
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