Costa Rica travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises, spa and resorts

Costa Rica is very close to tropical lines with green mountains, coasts and interior borders, it’s a spot for projecting travel fantasies. Officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a tiny country, but tremendous in versatility with coasts on two oceans, coral-lined beaches, active volcanoes, luxury resorts, surf camps and rich biodiversity.

Among the adreno-scenti, Costa Rica is emerged as one of the best and closest foreign adventure tourism destinations to the United States. Left, rafting on the Pacuare River near Turrialba in central Costa Rica.

The Costa Rica’s capital Monteverde is a Disneyland for eco-tourists. With its verdant cloud forest and 1,000 endemic plant species, Monteverde offers the pilgrimage to nature that many seek from the tropics. Many private companies have always operated in the reserve, and in recent years, privately run zoo-like exhibitions have popped up: a bat jungle, a frog pond, a butterfly garden, a serpentarium.

A blue morpho at the butterfly garden in Monteverde. Twenty-seven percent of Costa Rica’s land area is devoted to national parks and reserves, one of the highest percentages for any country. Monteverde, which is the primary place marketed to eco-tourists, is between two reserves — Monteverde and Santa Elena — deep in the Costa Rican highlands.

Some of the country’s best beaches are preserved in Manuel Antonio National Park with about 4,000 acres and 150,000 annual visitors. The airport that serves the park, is operated by two local airlines that land on an asphalt runway surrounded by jungle. Flying in feels as if you’re heading to a sea of African oil palms, the favored crop of nearby plantations.

A capuchin monkey at Manual Antonio National Park.