Costa Rica is considered to be the most touristy of the Central American nations by most people. It has a fairly well developed infrastructure for this purpose, and high plenty of high quality accommodation and restaurants in the most desirable cities. I was able to visit San Jose (the crappy capital city), La Fortuna, and Monteverde. The later two are interior towns near an active volcano and cloud forests, respectively.

La Fortuna is situated at the base of Volcan Arenal. It is a small town, and has a number of "adventure" activities available to do, such as repelling down waterfalls, whitewater rafting, safaris, and the like. There are a number of waterfalls in the area, with La Fortuna waterfall and Rio Celeste being the most interesting. La Fortuna waterfall is just outside of town, and is really quite massive and very beautiful. Rio Celeste's waterfall, however, is a little more unique. It is a crazy blue color and a bit more difficult to get to, so it seems more special. The water from the river actually changes color just upstream - it flows over some kind of mineral and is instantly dyed the blue color. Oh, and I saw a sloth on the way there, so that was cool.

The volcano is amazing as well, or, at least, it was for me - I had never seen lava before. There were nightly trips that took you out to a viewing point so you could see the explosions near the top. Me and a friend also did a day trip to the base of the volcano, where we did a bit of hiking and saw a number of monkeys.

Monteverde is accessible from La Fortuna via a "Jeep-Boat-Jeep" tour, which is actually a "Bus-Boat-Bus" tour these days. It goes over a lake, obviously, so the trip itself is quite nice. Monteverde is a pretty cool place, as well - it's main draw is the local cloud forests and a well developed adventure zip-line industry. The zip-lining is actually really fun, and I think the longest one was a full half kilometer. Probably not the best plan if you are scared of heights, though. The cloud forests were not as entertaining, as I didn't see any animals. Well, aside from some ants that attacked the person I was with. Somehow she stopped right on top of a nest or something and they started climbing all up on her leg, and she somehow freaked out to the point that she didn't/couldn't move, so I ultimately had to pick this girl up and move her 10 feet away. It was pretty heroic, really. She kicked me a bunch to knock the ants off her leg as a reward.

All in all, Costa Rica is pretty beautiful and I only got to see a tiny sliver of it - I can't wait to go back!