Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Costa Rica

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book before a trip to Costa Rica, based on the "Lonely Planet" name alone. Lonely Planet usually publishes the best travel books, but not in this case. We found that the directions to many of the establishments were incorrect, as were the descriptions. Some of the locals even pointed out parts of the book that were blatantly incorrect, such as certain restaurants or bars that were in a different part of town than stated in the book. This particular book could have used a better fact-checker. I will not be taking it with me on my next trip to Costa Rica.

I bought this book for my Costa Rica trip (8 weeks w/ a class, 3 weeks w/o), and replaced it within the first week. Most of the hotels are priced above what is listed, if they even exist anymore. Same with the restaurants. Also, LP over-emphasized many extreme tourist hotspots without giving enough info about smaller towns (don't miss Cauhita!), lesser-known forests (check out the Children's Eternal Rainforest), getting around by bus, super-budget hotels or border crossings. My advice: wait until you get into Costa Rica, then get the Tico Times guidebook, updated EVERY YEAR, written by the local english newspaper. It's easy to find and so much more relevant, with maps of every town, bus schedules, local festivals (where and when), border information, updated hotel + restaurant info, and how to find the information you can't find anywhere else.

We purchased Fodor's Guide at the same time we purchased Lonely Planet Costa Rica. Both my wife and I agree that Fodor's is the book we'll take with us to Costa Rica. This book is a bit more tedious to read. Needs layout work.

Just came back from a 9 day trip in Costa Rica with this book. I guess reading this book before we left gave us a good sense of how the country is like. Of course, like any other guide books, some of the information were outdated even when the book was hot off the press. We found a few things that were grossly inaccurated. Reported that to LP.

Materials are well organized like other LP book.

Maps are generally good, even the provencial one, it shows some of the roads were not even on the map our rental car agent gave us. Of course, some of the unpaved road are paved now. Detail city maps still are best among other guild books, and often enough to get around.

This is a very good book if you plan on traveling there for less than a month. If you plan on staying there longer, you will definately need to supplement it with more research online, especially if you plan on going to non-touristy destinations. I wish they spend less space describing each restaurant and hotel, but more details of each places.

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.

I was hoping for alot more detail about the weather, the people, and very detailed off road maps. Costa Rica, like other Central American countries, has a sparse network of trails turned roads, meandering the coast, and the authors of this book may not have traveled the back country like the more rugged vacationer. 4 stars though, because they have put forth tremendous effort in compiling VERY useful data. I'll just get my own map.

Although the overall impression of the book is positive (so the 3 stars...) I could not find ANY hotel still close to the price range listed for them, not to say that some of them are now defunct (restaurants included). But what I found worse were the low-planning content of the proposed routes (I eventually started one of them and had to remodel it on-the-fly for the loss of time it would cause me) and the misguided information on some attractions (take Las Baulas National Park for example: it has NO touristic structure besides the beach itself, being mostly a scientific facility for the preservation of turtles, but is currently being sold - in a unethical way, with thousand of unfulfilled promises - by local guides who in fact make you pay USD28 for just a night on the beach. The books says something about dozens of turtles coming EVERY NIGHT to the beach, which is totally false if not impossible, providing free-but-wrong advertising for those unethical guides and not helping at all the buyer of the book).

Once again, Lonely Planet delivers a thorough guide for travellers heading into an unknown destination. The book covers popular destinations as well as providing the history of the country and highlighting wildlife that is unique to the region. The book is broken up by region so it is easy to reference as you travel throughout the country. The restaurant guide is so thorough it included a bakery that we saw at a remote village in the jungle only accessible by boat. And the review was right on! I will definitely keep this for my next trip and look to Lonely Planet when venturing somewhere new.

We have visited Costa Rica several times with the aid of Lonely Planet. We recently completed a four month RV trip through Central America. Lonely Planet provides most of the essential information for such a trip, except for camping places (We have subsequently published our RV camping places in a separate book). If traveling by bus or car through Costa Rica this is the essential guide.

I found Paige Penland's version of Lonely Planet's Costa Rica Guide to be better than the more recent version. Her writing is always such a good read - she's the Queen of Travel Writing!