Costa Rica Travel Posters - Palm Trees on Playa Guiones Beach

Playa Guiones Beach, Nosara, Nicoya Peninsula, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica
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Bananas, coffee, cocoa, tobacco and honey all come out of Costa Rica, a country with no army and compulsory education. Here orchids bloom all year round and there are forests of rosewood, cedar and mahogany. Visitors can climb volcanoes and view two oceans, hunt jaguar, tapirs, ocelot and deer, go mining for gold, or fish for black marlin, tarpan, sawfish and lobster.

Country Briefing

Size: 19,883 square miles
Capital: San Jose
Population: 4,301,712
Climate: The dry season, December - May, is the best time to visit, but the climate is agreeable all year round.
Government; A republic.
Language: Spanish. English, German, French, Dutch and Italian frequently heard.
Religion: Roman Catholic, but other denominations represented.
Public Holidays: New Year's Day, 1 Jan; Feast of St Joseph, 19 Mar; Anniversary of the Battle of Rivas, 11 Apr; Easter, Labor Day, 1 May; Corpus Christi, June; St Peter and St Paul, 29 Jun; Anniversary of the Annexation of Guanacaste Province, 5 Jul; Our Lady of Angels, 2 Aug; Assumption and Mother's Day, 15 Aug; Independence Day, 15 Sep; Columbus Day, 12 Oct; Immaculate Conception, 8 Dec; Christmas Day, 25 Dec

Santa Maria International Airport is 11 miles from San Jose. Buses are frequent. Taxis plentiful. Airport departure tax, Duty free shop and hotel reservation counter.

For help in finding accommodations there is the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo, Calle Alfredo Volio, Avenidas 4 / 6, Apartado 777, San Jose. Inexpensive pensiones available.

Hotels in San Jose

Balmoral Avenida Central, Calles 7/9
Europa Calle Central, 5a Avenida
Irazu PO Box 962
President Avenida Central, Calles 7/9
Royal Dutch PO Box 4258
Crystal PO Box 5570, Autopista Wilson
Amstel Calle, 7, Avenidas 10/12
Gran Costa Rica 3a Calle, Avenidas Central / 2
Diplomat Calle 6, Avenidas Oriente / 2
Pension Canada Calle 9, Avenida 9, Casa No 779
Plaza Avenida Central, Calles 2/4

When giving directions the Costa Rican will give distances not in blocks, or yards, but in varas - a vara is some 33 inches.

Passport or Tourisst Visa Card (valid for 30 days) available from Costa Rican Consulates, plus means of identification and tickets for onward travel and a smallpox vaccination certificate. The visa is free for US and UK citizens. No currency restrictions and no customs declaration necessary for passengers carrying only personal effects. Duty free allowance; up to three liters of wine or spirits: half kilogram tobacoo in any form, and other items not exceeding USD 500 as a taxable amount.

What to See in St Thomas US Virgin Islands

Palm Tree on the Beach, Salomon Beach, Virgin Islands National Park, St. John, US Virgin Island
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St Thomas: The Capital, Charlotte Amalie, a pirate rendezvous in the 17th and 18th centuries, is still a lively town of narrow cobbled streets and steps, villas and a lovely harbor. The best view of the town and far out to sea is from Flagg Hill, reached by a 1000 ft aerial tramway. The oldest building is te 17th century Fort Christian with a small museum in its cells, and the most attractive is Crown House on top of the 99 Steps, and 18th century colonial residence on Blackbeard's Hill. The reception rooms of Government House have a collection of paintings including two by the impressionist painter, Pissarro, a native of St Thomas.

The Orchidarium, off Hardwood Highway, has tropical plants and hundreds of orchids. Explorer Sir Francis Drake's Seat, high above Magen's Bay. Near the bay is the Indies House luxury hotel, with a popular children's zoo. Alonf the western coast of the island are hote colony resorts of Bluebeard's Beach Club, Pineapple Beach Club, Pavilion and Pools (each cottage unit with its own swimming pool), Sapphire Bay Beach Club and Bali Hai.

Costa Rica Port Limón

Costa Rica is, therefore, a land agriculturally important and varied in climate, soil and altitude. All about at Port Limón is a Costa Rica green and hot and flat, but back from the sea are hills, long, green hills, and in the interior mountains and deep valleys, mountains of rock and earth, upturned by volcanic action, perhaps, but not volcanic in the sense that the predominating note is the sharp, thin peak of the volcanic cone. Real volcanic peaks are there, too, and indeed they will be the dominating factor of landscape after we reach the summit of the mountain range, but they are not the mountain range itself. Costa Rica is like the temperate countries in its mountains, while it is like the tropics in the endless green that covers those mountains.

Like all the countries of Central America, Costa Rica has a broad plain on the Atlantic or Caribbean side, a gradual rise to the table-land in the centre of the cordillera (where it is from 3,000 to 4,000 feet above the sea) and a sharp descent to a narrow plain on the Pacific shore. On the Caribbean coast the soil is the sand and mould of innumerable generations of tropical forest, on the table-land it is soft red clayey loam of much richness--the "red earth" of agricultural wealth --and on the Pacific a black volcanic sand tingeing even the beaches of the ocean furnishes the rich, porous sponge of volcanic silt.

From Port Limón the journey is only 104 miles up the mountainside to San José, the capital,--but it takes all day! It always takes all day to make a journey in the tropics. What with the wisdom of men who have learned that although hurry may get us along faster, it will not take us so far; what with the natural difficulties of keeping a railroad in record-making repair when during six months of the year the daily rain comes down with approximately the gentleness of a fire-hose; and what with the fact that there is no need to hurry.

Seated in the train, however, we find the world full of interesting things. The Costa Ricans (of whom there are, as noted, a few in Port Limón) come to the train to bid farewell to the two or three who are going to San José. The negro youth who took charge of our baggage wanders serenely in, an hour after all his work is done, to collect his fees, after which he sits down in the seat behind us, rolls himself out luxuriously and engages us in cordial persiflage until the train departs.

At last it does depart, on one of the various standard times that operate in Port Limón (Canal Zone time, Fruit Company time, Railroad time, San José time, etc.). It takes its way out along the edge of the sea, a beach lined with cocoanuts and banana trees, as we see it on our right, and on our left, a murmuring, beautiful, tropical river, running parallel to the ocean, and edging the banana and cocoanut groves. Then forests and banana lands and negroes; negroes individually, in gangs, in huts on stilts, in villages on stilts,--everywhere. And not one Costa Rican of any shade or color.

The black belt and the banana belt climb together, first across the low coastal plain, the bananas broken by cocoanut groves now and then, later by cacao plantations, with the brown chocolate beans drying in frames in front of the huts amid the flowers the negroes have planted there. Next the banana groves are broken with broader fields of beans and potatoes and maize patches on the hillsides, and last, far in the hills, by the first coffee plantations. But the black belt never breaks; not once, all the long day's ride, till we reach Cartago, the ancient capital, an hour out of San José, in the highlands. And there, at Cartago, the black belt does end, suddenly and finally.

The ride is beautiful, radiant in every conceivable way, in the wealth of tropical forest, first, then in views of the river tumbling over its rocks just below the railway grade, again in the vistas of this same river in a deeper valley and at last in higher hills, with longer distances and slightly more rugged valleys.