I was there mid August, and my feelings are mixed about it. To be honest, I was kind of underwhelmed.
The biggest thing for me is that I feel like I never experienced a different culture. Most of the places we were at felt like I was just walking around a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago.
A lot of stuff is WAY more expensive than you'd ever think. You can take a cross-country, eight-hour bus ride for like two bucks, but food and drinks cost the same as in the States, for the most part. In the tourist towns, which are really all towns of a decent size, sometimes we paid more than the US to eat.
The same went for most of the tourist-oriented activities we did. $50ish for an hour-long zipline tour, or for an hour-long boat ride across a bay. We did manage to get a good guide to take us around Manuel Antonio National Park for only like $10 a person, which, if you want to see any wildlife, I recommend. These guys have like a sixth sense for spotting hidden animals in the trees, things we would never have seen on our own.
We spent our first day around Alajuela, including Poas Volcano and a coffee plantation. Both were really cool to see. Then we went to La Fortuna and did some white-water rafting. Person I was with was not into hiking/trekking, which I would have liked to do. But we still had some fantastic views of Arenal.
We spent two days at Montezuma, in an awesome hotel/hostel called Luna Llena. I definitely recommend it. Montezuma's a cool beach town, but it's filled with dirty hippies and a dirtier beach which precludes any kind of laying out or relaxing. I don't think anyone was surfing there either, apparently the good surf was a couple miles up the coast.
Then we went to Manuel Antonio for a couple days, spent some time at the beach but we were unfortunately rained on pretty consistently. Hit up the park and chilled out at the small town. We drove through Jaco and Quepos which I believe are both surfer hotspots and significantly larger as towns. From there we headed back to SJ to spend the night and the next afternoon before flying out. That was the first time I felt like I was in a truly foreign country. Great way to get a feel for a different lifestyle...San Jose's an interesting city.
Overall I'd say it was a good vacation. It didn't meet my expectations but I think that's only because it had been built up to be some crazy-awesome, super cheap adventure destination. The flaws in my vacation were mostly due to poor weather, poor planning, and a travel partner with different tastes than me. I would go back again because it's ridiculously cheap to get there, but I'd spend more time seeing the country on my own terms and less time at the vacation hotspots and tourist traps.
