Though the Costa Rican press is free, it does indulge in a certain follow-the-leader style of journalism. Leader of the pack is the daily La Nación , voice of the (right-of-centre) establishment and owned by the country's biggest media consortium. It also comes with a useful daily pull-out arts section, Viva , with listings of what's on in San José - the classifieds are handy for almost anything, including long-term accommodation.

La República is no less serious, but slightly more downmarket. Al Día is the populist "body count" paper. Alternative voices include La Prensa Libre , the very good left-leaning evening paper, and the thoughtful weekly Esta Semana , which offers longer, in-depth articles and opinion pieces. The Semanario Universidad , the voice of the University of Costa Rica, published weekly, certainly goes out on more of a limb than the big dailies, with particularly good coverage of the arts and the current political scene. You can find it on campus or in San Pedro.

Local English-language papers include the venerable and serious Tico Times and the full-colour Costa Rica Today , intended for tourists, with articles on activities and holidays. Both can be a good source of information for travellers, and the ads regularly feature hotel and restaurant discounts. You can pick up recent copies of the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, USA Today, Miami Herald, Newsweek, Time and sometimes the Financial Times in the souvenir shop beside the Gran Hotel Costa Rica in downtown San José and La Casa de Revistas on the southwest corner of Parque Morazan. Elsewhere, they're difficult to find.

There are many commercial radio stations in Costa Rica, all pumping out the techno and house tunes-of-the-moment alongside salsa, commercials, and the odd bout of government-led pseudo-propaganda. Most Costa Rican households have a television , which shows wonderfully awful Mexican/Venezuelan telenovelas (soap operas) and some not bad domestic news programmes.