Customer Reviews

The New Key to Costa Rica

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We have travelled to Costa Rica on vacation half a dozen times, and the New Key has always been our primary guide (yes, we have also carried a variety of the other major guides). What distinguishes this guide is bolded in the title: Ecological ratings. It tell you who recycles, who has purchased rainforest for preservation, and who is conducting research or other eco-friendly activities. The reason people visit Costa Rica is the natural environment, and this guide helps you both navigagte it and preserve it at the same time.

So few "travel" books so successfully entice the traveler with Costa Rica's ecological treasures as this guide and a very luxurious book "The Last Country The Gods Made." The two are sort of the First and Last word on the country!

The New Key provides the times, directions and menus, while in The Last Country you won't find a word about the accomodations or the best surfer bar. About 60% of The New Key is devoted to getting you to the wildlife, and about half of The Last Country's 152 slick pages explain why you want to see it! And see it all you will, with these two treasures!

Also newly updated is Beatrice Blake and Anne Becher's New Key To Costa Rica, which promotes eco travel and outdoor adventures. Opinionated reviews cover both historic sites and outdoor adventure journeys, making for an absorbing and revealing guide.

I am disappointed with this book.

I reread it and customer reviews after returning from Costa Rica. I think this book is factually incorrect, but it fails to give first time travelers to CR the flavor of the country and the tools to build a satisfying and comfortable vacation. This book was written by long time North American residents of CR and functions more as a reference book for other english speaking residents of CR than as a tool for organizing a 2 week vacation.

I must say that I do NOT consider CR a "must see" country. It does not have a distinctive architecture, history, culture (literature, arts, folk crafts, etc). Its capital city, San Jose, is squalid and dangerous. Its smaller towns (I visited Guanacasta) are reached by narrow, hot, crowded, dusty and unpaved road. Locals are poor and drink beer as a pasttime.

Nevertheless I've seen many SUV's fording rivers with surf boards and other play things. Although its not apparent to the novice, CR is (by most accounts) an ecologists/biologists/geologists playground.

To really enjoy CR the vacationer needs to know why they are visiting the country and make specific plans to meet their goals. Do not rely on serendipitious discovery to fill the core of your vacation. If you a surfer, birder, diver, sailor, hiker etc than plan to make a bee line for those resorts/ persons who can help you enjoy these activities. Appreciating local culture should be a secondary activity. (Go for a 2 tank dive in the morning and have lunch in town with locals in the PM).

The book should be organized to help the vacationer reach places safely, confortably and mostly important, satisfy their interests.

As it is, the book is a reference for the ex-patriot, long term exchange student and backpacker, not the typical traveler.