Explore Costa Rica, 5th Edition - Softcover

Pariser, Harry S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1893643557 ISBN 13: 9781893643550

Publisher: Manatee Pr, 2006

Synopsis

Travel with award-winning travel guide author Harry S. Pariser around Costa Rica and experience its wonders! Dive and snorkel off the coast of the remote Osa Peninsula. Experience the Caribbean coast with its rich Jamaican culture. Visit the small hotels of the Pacific Coast and the Nicoya Peninsula and remote lodges in the heart of the rainforest. Dine everywhere from gourmet restaurants to local sodas. Ascend by rope and pulley into the rainforest canopy, explore caves, surf, kayak, canoe, bungee jump, mountain bike, trek, or just lay back on a beach, relax, and watch the monkeys at play. Internal air flights, bus travel, ferry schedules, what to do, what to avoid. Studying Spanish, volunteer programs, and sustainable tourism. Maps, photos, web sites, useful tips. Humorous, informative, educational, detailed. There's no other guide quite like it!

About this title

About the Author

Mr. Pariser is a writer, artist, photographer, and graphic designer. Born and raised in southwestern Pennsylvania, he is a graduate of the College of Communications of Boston University. Mr. Pariser's first two books Guide to Jamaica and Guide to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands were published in 1986 and 1987. He has also penned guides to Barbados, Belize, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica. Mr. Pariser has traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean. He has lived in Japan:in Kyoto, in the historical city of Kanazawa (facing the Japan Sea), and in Kagoshima, a city at the southern tip of Kyushu across the bay from an active volcano. His articles and photographs have appeared in The Japan Times, Costa Rica Outlook, Belize First, Caribbean Travel &Life, the San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Frontlines, Atevo.com, India Currents, JazzReview.com, among others. He enjoys painting, cooking, backpacking and hiking, photography, and listening to music-- especially jazz, salsa, calypso, and African pop. His other interests range from politics to anthropology to linguistics to cinema, theater, and literature. He lives in the Inner Sunet area of San Francisco. Mr. Pariser received the Society of American Travel Writer's Lowell Thomas Award 1995 Best Guidebook Award (Silver) for his Adventure Guide to Barbados.

From the Inside Flap

This extensively revised guide to Costa Rica now has 38 maps, numerous sidebars, and lists and describes the vast majority of the country's hotels, inns, hostels, nature lodges, and campsites

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Costa Rica's capital city of San Jose was once a sleepy backwater. Today, it is today a mixture of boldly intruding billboards advertising Kentucky Fried and Coke, shanty houses on hillside tugurios, and ten-speed bicyclists in spandex, who roam the streets in the company of BMWs and Volvos. Within a single generation San Jos has been transformed from a quiet town into a crowded, bustling metropolis, one which has already engulfed neighboring suburbs and threatens to swallow the nearby cities of Cartago, Alajuela, and Heredia, in the process creating one giant megapolis. Forecasts are that the greater San Jos metropolitan area will have over two million inhabitants by the end of this century. With some 660-700,000 people, 30% of the nation lives here. MUSEO DE JADE: Misleadingly named, this small jewel of a museum is really a full-fledged introduction to the cultures of Costa Ricas indigenous peoples. There are musical instruments, bows and arrows, an aerial photo of the Guayabo archaeological site, ceramic ocarinas, flints, anthropomorphic metales (grinding stones) and others with elaborately carved undersides, a disk with Maya inscriptions, fantastic female ceramic figurines (from AD 700-1100), and a large two-piece incense burner with a marvelous lagarto (lizard) carved on the lid. The quality of both the imagery and the technique puts most contemporary art to shame. After some finely crafted carved jade pieces showing South American influences, theres a sitting room with a great view to the north. Give your feet, brain, and eyes a brief rest here because youll need it for whats to come. Next is a room displaying ceramic and gold objects. Then, the displays change with room after room of anthropomorphically-shaped jade scrapers and other objects from the Pacific coast, many of which show a Mayan influence. Works from the central and Atlantic areas are also on display. These jade pieces did not come from archaeological sites but rather were purchased from private collectors who bought them from looters. The last room shows some enormous clay phalluses along with phallic ocarinas, masturbating clay men, ceramic hermaphrodite and female fertility figures, and a group of wild-eyed, frantically clutching, copulating clay couples. Finally, out in the hall theres a replica of a 14th C. Tang Dynasty ceramic horse, a gift from the Chinese Embassy. Do you wonder where all of the objects in the museum came from? They were purchased from private collectors who bought them from looters. Very few items were excavated. The museum (phone 223-5800) is located on the 11th floor of the INS (Instituto Nacional de Seguros; Institute for National Security), C. 11, Av. 7. Its open Mon.-Fri., 8-4:30. Admission is US$5 for adults; children are free.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manatee Pr
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1893643557
• ISBN 13: 9781893643550
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 5
• Number of pages: 648