Why You Should Visit Costa Rica...Now

Of course, to be fair, there are reasons not to visit Costa Rica. If you're used to the nightlife of Hollywood Boulevard, Nanjing Road in Shanghai, Roppongi in Tokyo, or Soho in London, then Costa Rica will be a big change for you. If you think Lombard Street in San Francisco is a rough ride, then you won't want to be on the bumpy road leading up to Monteverde, home of the spellbinding cloud forests in the northwest of Costa Rica. If you only speak English…well, don't worry about that. Most employees at most resorts speak pretty good English.

However, if you're interested in nature in any of its forms (animals, bugs, mountains, beaches, bodies of water, forests, plants, and so on), then Costa Rica's the place for you. If you're an environmentalist or just someone who's concerned about preserving our natural resources, then you might even want to stay for a while. Costa Rica probably has more eco-lodges than anywhere else in the world. If you're tired of emptying your wallet for a tiny hotel room in Paris, then you'll love the spacious resorts next to the Caribbean.

I was fortunate enough to spend a month in Costa Rica as part of a group called International Student Volunteers (ISV) a few years back (has it already been a few years?), two weeks volunteering with local villagers and two weeks touring the country, so I got both the locals' version and the tourists' version, which are, naturally, quite different.

Being so close to the equator, Costa Rica has perhaps the greatest biodiversity in the world, meaning there are more species of animals and plants packed into this tiny country of barely four million inhabitants (that's not even half of Los Angeles County) than anywhere else in the world. It is also the safest and most economically stable country in all of Latinamerica, free of all the political wars, economic crises, and pollution (the tap water is more than safe to drink) that wrack a number of Latinamerican countries, so if you've never been to Latinamerica and are the type to visit every country in Western Europe before you even consider touching Eastern Europe or Asia, then Costa Rica is a good place to start.

Now that we have the summary of a Wikipedia article out of the way, let me tell the real story:

I stayed in a village called Pejivalle in the Cartago province, working on a wildlife refuge called La Marta. It was, to be trite, one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It was actually pretty awesome staying in a house without electricity, having dinner by candlelight every night, waking up looking at the mountains every morning. The house itself was much less rustic than I had expected. Some hot water would've been nice, but at least there was a Western-style toilet and it had plumbing (if you've been to some parts of Asia, you'll appreciate this). I enjoyed taking baths in rivers and under waterfalls, but let's not get too romantic here. I usually went back to the house to really shower.

It was my first time living in a village, and honestly most things I had read in books or seen in movies were true. It was such a small community that everybody knew everybody. Of course, that also meant gossip spread like wildfire. Oddly, I find this might attract certain people.

When it was time to go, lots of people cried. Of course, I didn't cry. (No, really, I didn't.) Many of my fellow volunteers went back after our two-week tour to visit. It just so happened that the end of our tour coincided with the annual festivities of Pejivalle.

When you go on tour in Costa Rica, there's something for everyone: whitewater rafting and the likes for adventurers, numerous hiking trails for nature lovers, natural hot springs for those who are a little tired of the standard fare in America, and beautiful resorts for those on their honeymoon. If you miss the city nightlife that badly, you can try out the clubs in San Jose, the capital. They're the best the country has to offer.

Here are some highlights of adventures I personally experienced:

Rappelling down a waterfall is utterly fun and absolutely safe-unless you're like me who almost fell, in which case it was still at least utterly fun. I'm a city boy, so galloping on a horse was perhaps the scariest thing I had done in my life up to that point. Ziplining comes in a variety of heights and distances. It's technically ziplining even if you just swing across a park holding a crossbar gear that's sliding across a length of rope, even if there is sand just a few feet below you. What I did was sliding across over a hundred feet of hard wire with a thick forest over a thousand feet below me. That was pretty cool.

These things you can probably do in America too, but they're certainly a lot more affordable in Costa Rica. You might think about the plane ticket (if you're used to flying across the Pacific or Atlantic, then the ticket will actually seem cheap), but there's a sure-fire way to make your trip financially worthwhile. Need some expensive dental work done? Go to Costa Rica. The doctors there will do it for a fraction of a price. Even including the plane ticket, you would be saving money. The dental work in Costa Rica is excellent. I never saw a bad smile when I was there.

The Cloud Forest in Monteverde is stunning. When you get to the top, you can see the Continental Divide that runs from Colorado all the way to Panama. Have any ideas why they call it the Cloud Forest?

If you want something a little more…natural (you'll come to realize that "natural" is a buzzword that tourist agencies use for packages in Costa Rica) than an indoor spa, then how about a hot spring powered by a volcano that you can see in the distance? The natural hot spring I went to (sorry, no longer remember the name), the higher up you go, the hotter it gets. I was never able to stay in the topmost spring for too long. Part of the fun is having that exploring-the-jungle feeling as you walk across real rock and push through leaves to find new hot springs of varying sizes and temperatures. On the bottom, you could swim up to a bar and buy drinks. Near the top, squint and you can see the glow of the lava flowing down. Don't worry. Take note of the "squint" part. The mouth of the volcano itself is quite far away.

Many resorts in Costa Rica boast being "all natural." Well, they certainly come a lot closer than most resorts in most countries. At one particular resort, Selva Bananito (I believe there's a more detailed article on this resort on AC) there's no electricity (but there is hot water). When you go to dinner, it's all candlelit, and you need to take off your shoes before you can step on the wooden floor. You have to use their soap, shampoo, and conditioner because the drainage system goes to the plants, and the owner (it was a German guy when I went) doesn't want them to be contaminated by any products that are less than all natural, even if they're bio-degradable. An environmentalist's dream.

My favorite resort of all the ones I stayed at is La Playa Ocotal. Despite being a city boy (or maybe because of it), I love natural sceneries, and it doesn't get much better than this. Every morning, you have breakfast outside overlooking the Pacific Ocean from upclose. At night, you have a candlelit dinner inside (it's too windy at night even during the summer to dine outside) while listening to the melodies of the ocean.

Relatively speaking, Costa Rica is a less-oft visited destination. It won't stay that way for long, not with the government and businesses touting "eco-tourism" in Costa Rica, which with all due credit is one of the only countries in the world that can honestly tout something called "eco-tourism." So if you want to see this beautiful country before it becomes another Venice, this is why you should visit Costa Rica…now.