Moon Costa Rica (Moon Handbooks) Paperback – December 3, 2013

I have a couple of Moon Books and they have all been a good source of information. The one on Costa Rica has been a big help in planning our trip there. Only thing that would be very helpful is a bigger and more detailed map of Costa Rica. I'm constantly going to Google to find where a place is at.

Book shipped quickly and arrived in mint condition. This book was very helpful traveling through Costa Rica. I would definitely recommend buying this for an upcoming trip. I would still make sure to buy a map of the country, as well as download Waze if you are driving.

I used this guide for a 2-week trip to CR in December 2012, encompassing driving from Nicoya to the Sta Elena cloud forest, down to the Osa Peninsula for a week at an eco-lodge (the marvelous Las Caletas), and then 5 days of spontaneous road-tripping, working our way back up from Osa to Liberia via the southern pacific coast.So we had LOTS of opportunity to refer to this book for food, lodging and sights.The good part is that he recommended Las Caletas lodge in Osa, which we booked for 4 nights & loved so much we extended our stay for another 2 nights. This was the highlight of our trip and we plan to go back.By & large, though, the author's (Christopher P. Baker) main interest in lodging seems to be interior decor - the book spends an inordinate amount of time describing the color schemes & decorative styles of lodging (with a bent toward pastels), which we just found annoying after a while. We care more about location, views, comfort, friendliness of the managers. We were happy to spend $100+ night for lodging if the location was spectacular, but we weren't interested in paying for (or reading about) places based on their decor.Also, the author's guidance on food was frequently wrong: he highly recommeded an overpriced restaurant in Monteverde called Sofia, where the food tasted like something I would have made for company in college - quesadillas and a bland veggie-cheese dish passed off as a chile relleno. And a soda in Puerto Jiminez he said was one of the best in CR was also nothing special. Bottom-line: don't go to Costa Rica for the food, and don't waste your time looking for good food when you're there - the best you can hope for is good fish and good meat, the rest is bound to be bland.I realize this is now an outdated edition (2009) but next time I'll look for a guide by a different author, one whose tastes in lodging I'll hope are more in synch with my own.

Excellent source book for us as we travelled! This is the book to bring if you are heading into the rainforest or just choosing a beach!

The Moon guide was chock full of information, much of it very helpful in preparing us for our trip to Costa Rica. Highly recommended. If I were to critique it I would say that the author has taken a lot of care to be informative, objective, and neutral, but the downside is that you need to study the guide to understand the information because there's so much info and the author doesn't steer you a lot. For instance, it encouraged us to stay in the Monteverde area, which turned out to be great advice, but we thought we'd be closer to Arenal volcano, which was not even viewable from Monteverde or the surrounding area. Similarly, the descriptions of the different Playas in Guanacaste didn't seem to differentiate the places as much as they could have, which made the descriptions a little less helpful than they could have been in picking a place to stay (example: Playa Hermosa has virtually no town, which I didn't pick up from the guide's description). Note that if the description of your hotel doesn't contain any superlatives, it's probably because the hotel doesn't deserve any (though the author won't come right out and say so). Overall the guide was well worth having. The seller delivered it in the condition and timeframe advertised, though it took a good bit longer (16 days) to receive it than other books I've ordered from Amazon, which required me to do some cramming to extract the needed information before leaving on our trip. Not ordering it earlier was my fault, but an earlier delivery would have been helpful, so arrange to get it well in advance of your trip to get the most out of it.

Moon seems to publish some of the best guides - and this one is no exception. Very practical advice for Costa Rica travel is given.

I purchased this book at Barnes and Noble in May 2019. Worst travel book I've ever had. I am currently using it in Costa Rica. This book should not be for sale if it is not current. I have hit dead ends every day. The few restaurants that are open are overpriced but not worth the up charge.

This will be most helpful on our study abroad trip this summer! Although a book can't do justice to such a beautiful country, it covers the utmost necessities to help you navigate this tropical gem!