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Avg. Customer Review: 
 Not up to the LP standard
As a big fan of the LP series, I was really looking forward to this guide to Costa Rica. Unfortunately, it fell short in many areas.1) The author did not research things very well. He continually uses phrases like "nice-looking hotel", "the restaurant appears well-liked", etc. Essentially meaningless, content-free info on places. 2) The info is somewhat out-of-date. Several places I stayed at had changed their price / format / philosophy, well before publication of the book. 3) The book should have been called "Birding Through Costa Rica". It's great that the author has a hobby, but it's quite obvious that he should have been spending more time researching sites and accomodations while he was hunting down the brown pelican for the eleventeenth time. While the wildife section and descriptions were interesting, the author's obsession with birds really gets annoying, especially when it is at the cost of more beneficial info. 4) In this guide the author uses the first person singular perspective more than any other LP guide. It's really unnerving. Yeah Rob, it's great that you met Dave the bartender in Domenical, but I'd much rather know where the gas station is, BIG GUY. As usual, this edition of the LP will no doubt become the "default" reference guide to Costa Rica, but in this case it's not because the author did a great research job. It's not bad, but greatly diminished by relying on one slightly bent birder as the main source of travel info. My buddy and I made sure we tried to wheelie our motorcycles over the gullet of any birds on the road as a result. LP still rules, I just hope Rob the Birder doesn't write many more editions.
 best for low budget
Lonely Planet tends to cater towards the low budget student traveler and this book is no different. However, I am a budget student traveler and found this book extremely helpfull. My friends and I began refering to it as the "biblia" which means bible. It knows exactly what an adventurous young traveler will want to do. Great guide, wayyyy better than the frommers. Put the frommers down.
Necessary to know what to avoid
Just got back from Costa Rica (2 wks), and had a good time, though it wasn't without serious disappointment. While there we noticed that almost all the guidebooks people were carrying around were Lonely Planet (LP). But everywhere we stayed that LP raved about was very disappointing, and the few places we stayed that were very understated in LP were excellent. My theory is that so many people are using LP that if a place gets a rave recommendation the business just pours in. They jack up their prices, sit back and rest on their reputation, and the facility and service deteriorate. But the money keeps pouring in because of that great LP review. Meanwhile the underrated places have to work their butts off to get business. Even though LP CR is only 2 years old, the prices of the highly rated hotels were off by as much as 50%, whereas the ones with understated descriptions were right on. Generally, I like using LP, but for CR I would say that too many people do. Grab a different guidebook and cross-ref it with LP. If it has a nice sounding place that's not in LP, stay there! We also used Frommer's even though it doesn't have much of a selection of budget places. Frommer's descriptions are so much more colorful and accurate. You get the impression that they only write about places for which they have first-hand knowledge. Plus Frommer's 2004 edition is new and the prices were exactly right. But, it's not sufficient by itself because it just doesn't list enough places. Our rule of thumb for LP CR: If LP writes more than half a column about a hotel or lodge, avoid it! It will be overrated by now, with ridiculously high prices, and an inattentive staff. Next gripe related to the advice in this guidebook: all the concerns and warnings are grossly exagerated. The roads are bad, but they don't swallow cars and break axles. There may be some crime, but there aren't people learching in the shadows to flatten your tires every time you stop. The busy season doesn't fill every hotel -- in fact without reservations, we got our first choice of hotels every night. I wonder how much more fun my trip would have been if I hadn't let this book make me so defensive! Here's a tip for Costa Rican hotels: it doesn't matter how expensive the place is, the showers are lousy, with very little hot water and terrible water pressure. So don't pay $45 for a place just because it has hot showers when the place next door is only $25.
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