Boutique Hotels in Costa Rica

Most trips begin in Alajuela, the province that holds the main airport, 20 kilometres from the capital. North of it, Arenal Volcano erupted without a pause from 1968 to 2010 and has been asleep since, which has done nothing to cool its hot springs. Puntarenas is the long Pacific province that climbs to Monteverde, the cloud forest that eleven Quaker families from Alabama settled in 1951 and named Green Mountain. Members book these at rates we hold for the Club. In the north-west, Dos Rios lies under Rincón de la Vieja, a volcano of hot pools and bubbling mud, and Tamarindo is a fishing village that surfers found, with leatherback turtles nesting two kilometres up the beach.

The south is wilder and takes more effort. Uvita faces the marine park where humpback whales arrive from December to April. Beyond it, the Osa Peninsula holds Corcovado, 424 square kilometres of national park and the home of Baird's tapir; Drake Bay is its northern shore, and Golfito sits across the Golfo Dulce, a tropical fjord that whales and dolphins share.

The dry season runs from December to April and the rainy one from May to November, though neither keeps strictly to its name: there are wet days in the dry months and dry weeks in the wet ones. December to April is the easy choice, and the months when the humpbacks are off Uvita. The rainy season is called the green season by everyone with a room to let, and for once the marketing is fair. The forest is at its greenest and the country is a good deal quieter. Drake Bay can be reached by road only in the dry months, so keep the far south for those unless a boat is part of the plan.

Distances are short and journeys are not. Monteverde is about four hours by road from the central valley, much of it uphill, and the far south is quicker by air: Puerto Jiménez, the main town of the Osa Peninsula, has its own airstrip. Drake Bay is reached by boat or small plane, and by four-wheel drive in the dry season only, and Golfito, the old banana port, has a ferry across the gulf to Puerto Jiménez. For a first visit, hire a driver for the northern circuit of volcano and cloud forest, and fly to the south if the south is on the list. It is a country to see by day, so plan to arrive before dark.

Breakfast is gallo pinto, yesterday's rice fried with black beans until the grains are speckled, eaten with eggs and a spoonful of sour cream. Beside it goes Lizano, a brown vegetable sauce that Próspero Jiménez first mixed in his bar in Alajuela in 1920 and that the country has put on its rice ever since. The coffee is arabica and good enough to take black. A country that gave up its army kept the sauce.