It’s a rather vast area of the country, and thanks to the difficult mountainous and jungle-covered landscape, the route you take will depend a lot on where you’re coming from and where it is – exactly – that you want to go. The northern zone starts in the west with the city of Tilarán in

This region covers a large area of the country, straddling the provincial border of Alajuela and Guanacaste. The landscape is beautiful and varied, including mountains of Arenal and Tenorio, the Monteverde cloudforest, the plains north of the lake that border Nicaragua, the rainforest, and the pastureland where beef farmers graze their cattle. There are a

The South Caribbean is one of the few remaining areas of the country where the real estate boom has yet to make a substantial mark. It’s not for lack of beauty, leisure activities, or a welcoming community. Rather, it’s because access to the area is difficult and the region’s maintains an exaggerated reputation for bad

The South Caribbean isn’t the place to make a second income from renting out an investment property since rental rates haven’t reached anywhere near what they have on the Pacific Coast and in the Central Valley. Simply enough, demand is lower and on the lower end of the rate scale. Plenty of cute little hotels

Unfortunately, both Puerto Viejo and Cahuita have bad reputations, when it comes to petty theft and other drug-related crime. Long-term expatriates of the area say that luckily, so far, their area doesn’t yet have a problem with armed robbery. To prevent it from becoming a problem in the future, the community has been working hard

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the first large-scale resort is supposedly underway in the Caribbean. The success of such a project in the region has the potential to bring more investment. The project is located in the Limón district, about an hour’s drive from Cahuita and Puerto Viejo. Limón already has a tourist industry

1. Private Schools Two private schools and a number of public schools offer classes in the areas. In Puerto Viejo there is a Waldorf school that takes pupils from 3rd grade, with a kindergarten also on the grounds. Waldorf schools are also known as Steiner schools. They use a curriculum created by Rudolf Steiner that is