The Central Pacific is a beautiful but slow drive over the mountains of the Central Valley (the new highway will run along the bottom of the valley). If there isn’t much traffic, the ride from the international airport shouldn’t take more than two hours, but it’s fairly typical to get stuck behind a slow-moving truck

The headline on a recent story in local daily La Nación says it all: “Horror Story.” A highway connecting San José with the Pacific port town of Caldera in the shortest route possible started as a dream in 1973. Ever since then, it’s been a nightmare of legal battles, bureaucracy, waste, and political foot-dragging – until now.

The Central Pacific zone is a beautiful stretch of lowland pasture that, a few kilometers inland, heaves up into the Fila de Bustamente, a line of hills covered partially in thick forest and partially in pastureland. Hectares and hectares of palm oil plantations cover the area surrounding Parrita and Quepos. Passing these plantations, you might

Quepos and Manuel Antonio lie about an hour’s drive south from Jacó and host a very different community altogether. Of the two, Quepos is the bigger town but still very much a working fishing town rather than a tourist destination. Its real estate market isn’t as developed as that of Manuel Antonio, a 10-minute drive

Development in Jacó began earlier than in Tamarindo, though the latter has now more or less caught up. Real estate brokers estimate that the frenzy of condominium, resort, and condotel development will put about 2,000 new units on the market over the next few years. Of course, as with any real estate development, some of