Overview
Sights and Activities
Planning Your Trip
Accommodations
Basics
Outdoor Recreation
Beyond Tourism
As a tourist, you are always a foreigner. Sure, hostel-hopping and sightseeing can be great fun, but connecting with a foreign country through studying, volunteering, or working can extend your travels beyond tourist traps. We don’t like to brag, but this is what’s different about a Let’s Go traveler. Instead of feeling like a stranger in a strange land, you can understand Costa Rica like a local. Instead of being that tourist asking for directions, you can be the one who gives them (and correctly!). All the while, you get the satisfaction of leaving Costa Rica in better shape than you found it (after all, it’s being nice enough to let you stay here). It’s not wishful thinking—it’s Beyond Tourism.
As a volunteer in Costa Rica, you can unleash your inner superhero with projects from protecting endangered turtles from poachers and predators on the coast to farming one of Costa Rica’s biggest exports, pineapples, in a sustainable environment. This chapter is chock-full of ideas on how to get involved, whether you’re looking to pitch in for a day as part of a vacation or run away from home for a whole new life in Costa Rican activism.
The powers of studying abroad are beyond comprehension: it can actually make you feel sorry for those poor tourists who don’t get to do any homework while they’re here. Most college programs combine Spanish immersion with environmental or ecological studies and field work. Homestays with Costa Rican families allow you to see the country beyond the tourist lens, and maybe even find a second home. Interested in research? Costa Rica’s ecological and biological diversity make it the ideal place to find or join a research project.
Working abroad immerses you in a new culture and can bring some of the most meaningful relationships and experiences of your life. Yes, we know you’re on vacation, but these aren’t your normal desk jobs. (Plus, it doesn’t hurt that it helps pay for more globetrotting.) Although it may be difficult to find work in Costa Rica, it is not impossible. The country is reluctant to surrender jobs to foreigners, but there are opportunities for work and internships, as well as numerous opportunities to teach English in a variety of settings.
Beyond Tourism will prove particularly appealing to backpackers traveling through Central America and spending at least three to four weeks in each country, as well as high school and college-age students interested in cultural immersion and Spanish language instruction. If you’re just traveling through the country and looking for an interesting alternative to tourism, read newspapers, hotel information boards, and fliers posted on the streets in touristed areas for local opportunities. Whether you’re repairing trails at a national park for a few days, rafting and hiking through the jungle, or learning Spanish from natives in a small village, you’re bound to have a unique and culturally illuminating experience, not to mention plenty of stories to bring home with you.
For 50 years, we have published the world’s favorite budget travel guides, written entirely by students and updated every year. With pen and notebook in hand and a few changes of underwear stuffed in our backpacks, we spend months roaming the globe in search of travel bargains.