Though everyone passes through it, hardly anyone falls in love with San José , Costa Rica's underrated capital. Often dismissed as an ugly urban sprawl, the city enjoys a dramatic setting amid jagged mountain peaks, plus some excellent cafés and restaurants, leafy parks, a lively university district and a good arts scene. The surrounding Valle Central is the country's agricultural heartland, and also home to several of its finest volcanoes, including the huge crater of Volcán Poás and the largely dormant Volcán Irazú, a strange lunar landscape high above the regional capital of Cartago.

Though nowhere in the country is further than nine hours' drive from San José, the far north and the far south are less visited than other regions. The broad alluvial plains of the Zona Norte are often overlooked, despite featuring active Volcán Arenal, which spouts and spews within sight of the friendly tourist hangout of Fortuna, affording arresting night-time scenes of blood-red lava illuminating the sky. Off-the-beaten-path travellers and serious hikers will be happiest in the rugged Zona Sur , home to Mount Chirripó, the highest point in the country. Further south, on the outstretched feeler of the Osa Peninsula, Parque Nacional Corcovado protects the last significant area of tropical wet forest on the Pacific coast of the isthmus and is probably the best destination in the country for walkers - and also one of the few places where you have a fighting chance of seeing some of the wildlife for which Costa Rica is famed.

In the northwest, the cattle-ranching province of Guanacaste is often called "the home of Costa Rican folklore", and sabanero (cowboy) culture dominates here, with exuberant rag-tag rodeos and large cattle haciendas. Limón province, on the Caribbean coast, is the polar opposite to traditional ladino Guanacaste, home to the descendants of the Afro-Caribbeans who came to Costa Rica at the end of the nineteenth century to work on the San José-Limón railroad - their language (Creole English), Protestantism and the West Indian traditions remain relatively intact to this day.

Close to the Pacific coast , Monteverde has become the country's number-one tourist attraction, pulling in the visitors who flock here to walk trails through some of the last remaining cloudforest in the Americas. Further down the coast is the popular beach of Manuel Antonio, with its picture-postcard ocean setting, plus the equally pretty but far less touristed beaches of Sámara and Nosara on the Nicoya Peninsula.