After posting my Costa Rica photos a number of people have asked me if I used any Costa Rica guide books and which are good if you are planning to go there for a vacation. I have a few different books that I take down with me there. I prefer some of the newer colorful yet comprehensive guides compared to the older more traditional format. Most of the Costa Rica guides are broken into different regions such as North West, Pacific North, Central Valley, San Jose, Caribbean, Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific Coast.

One the best books was a new one called Time Out Costa Rica, it provided lots of great detail and had a lot of visuals but the real bonus of the book is that it written by a team of locals and provides a lot of information on more things to see and do other than the standard touristy stuff, the maps in it are also pretty decent. The layout and size of the book is good, convenient to carry around with you, overall it was a just a really good guide book on Costa Rica and I definitely recommend it.

Time Out Costa Rica (Time Out Guides)
$17.90 at Amazon.com

The following book, Costa Rica Eyewitness Travel Guide we used the first time we went to Costa Rica in Dec. 2006 and again when we went in Nov. 2009. It’s a very detailed and comprehensive guide, it gives you many useful colorful maps and information about each region. Its a fairly slim book so its easy to carry around and access information easily as the book is organized well. Even from the first trip to the second trip the majority of the info remained the same and is current, in fact while looking at newer books before I went down on my second trip I found that it actually has better more detailed info than some newer books.

Costa Rica (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE)
$16.50 at Amazon.com

If you are into birding and photography, this is probably the best reference guide for birds in Costa Rica. Even, if you are not that much into birds its still good to have as you will see lots of different birds while you travel and chances you’ll be curious what they are, I definitely recommend it.

The Birds of Costa Rica: A Field Guide
$19.77 at Amazon.com

Other books noteworthy of mention include Fodor’s Costa Rica 2010 (Full-Color Guide) and Lonely Planet’s Costa Rice guide are also both excellent books, I did not buy them as I could only buy and carry so many but these books are booth very good and have mostly the same information as the ones I have mentioned above, they are definitely worth consideration.

Fodor’s Costa Rica 2010 (Full-Color Guide)
$13.59 at Amazon.com

Lonely Planet – Costa Rica
$14.95 at Amazon.com

The following is the actual driving route I took while in Costa Rica, this is the exact GPS tracked route I took through the country while on vacation. If you have Google Earth click on the image below to load up the GPS route I took while doing a circle tour of Costa Rica. The GPS coordinates were tracked by a device called a Data Logger, the small device I used to track it was the Columbus V-900 Bluetooth GPS Data Logger which sells for $99 on Amazon.com. There was a few small gaps in a few places because I forgot to turn the device back on but for the most part you can see the route I took. This route took me through La Fortuna / Arenal volcano area, Poas Volcano, cut through San Jose, Cartago/Orosi valley area, Manuel Antonio, Monteverde cloud forest and Tamarindo/Playa Grande before finally making our way back to the airport in Liberia, Costa Rica.

Here are some new pictures from my two week vacation tour of Costa Rica in November 2009. We rented an SUV and did a circle of the country stopping for a few nights each in La Fortuna / Arenal volcano area, Poas Volcano, Cartago/Orosi valley area, Manuel Antonio, Monteverde cloud forest and finally ending it off at the beach for a few days in Playa Grande which is just north of Tamarindo beach. Here is a small sampling of some of the pictures I took while down there, in total I took over 2000 photos but still sorting through many of them. Photos were taken with my Olympus E-620 DSLR camera and I used a wide variety of different lenses. Click here to view my Costa Rica 2009 gallery.

View Costa Rica – Nov. 2009 in a larger map

I will be traveling down to Costa Rica again in November for two weeks, the above Google Map is the rough route I will be taking across the country visiting the Arenal volcano area, Poas Volcano, Cartago/Orosi valley area, Manuel Antonio, Monteverde cloud forest area and finally end it off at the beach in Playa Grande. We will have a rental SUV and will be road tripping staying a few days at each location. We should be able to see a lot more this time of Costa Rica and I have much better camera gear this time for photos.

To see some photos of our last trip to Costa Rica back in December 2006, click here for some pictures or click here for some more photos.