Tips To Start Your Travels: Costa Rica

Friendly people, English media, many ex-pats and a well-developed tourism infrastructure makes this small Central American country a great place to begin your travels - especially if you haven't done much travel in recent years. Costa Rica offers you a diversity of locations to visit like volcanoes, beautiful beaches and rain forests.

Local people, also known as Ticos, are very helpful and always willing to assist lost or confused tourist. You can find English newspapers o-nline and in newsstand, that provides an ex-pat point of view on local and national issues. Costa Rica offers modern tourism infrastructure like airports, many hotels and hostels and a great variety of activities and day tours.

Costa Rica offers a view of orchid gardens galore as well as coffee and banana plantations tours. Its diverse environment offers cloud forest in the mountains, coastal beaches with white sand, jungles with birds, monkeys, sloths and a myriad of other animals.

Here are some challenges you are likely to encounter and how to handle them, since not everything is easy in Costa Rica:

*The majority of people, other than those working in tourism-related services, speak only Spanish. You can handle it, if you want to experience the true Tico culture, by learning a little of the local language.

*Taking taxis and public buses, which are fairly cheap, might be a good idea, especially in San Jose, since there is no building numbering system. The street signs are a pretty rare occurrence too.

*The currency is different of course, you can handle it by dealing mostly with bills and just the larger coins until you get used to all of the different denominations. You'll find it's not so hard to learn.

Bottom line is that Costa Rica offers an easy start to traveling outside your home country. An added bonus is that it isn't far from the US and Canada and there are many airlines offering dozens of flights weekly.

Article Source: TravelFreeGuides.com

About the Author

Marina K. Villatoro, the Travel Experta, has been living in Central America - Costa Rica and Guatemala for over 10 years. She has traveled here extensively. Now loves organizing vacations to this amazing part of the world, having first hand experience of all the places with her family. Contact her for advice and to plan your perfect trip!

by: Marina K. Villatoro

Total views: 4 Word Count: 336 Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 Time: 6:15 AM - 0 comments

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