This Is The Best Costa Rica Blog. Here Are 25 Reasons Why.

Article written by Nikki Solano

Nikki is the CEO of Pura Vida! eh? Inc. (Costa Rica Discounts), the creator and narrator of Spotify's Costa Rica Podcast with Nikki Solano, and the author of the guidebooks Moon Costa Rica (2019, 2021, 2023, and 2025 editions) and Moon Best of Costa Rica (2022 edition) from Moon Travel Guides. Together with her Costa Rican husband, Ricky, she operates the Costa Rica Travel Blog, created the online community DIY Costa Rica, built the Costa Rica Destination Tool, and designed the Costa Rica Trip Planning 101 E-Course. In addition, Nikki has written about or presented Costa Rica on Rick Steves' Monday Night Travel show and podcast/radio show, in Wanderlust Magazine, and for Essentialist. Want to show your appreciation for her free article below? Thank Nikki here. ❤️️

Before we say anything else, know this: We are incredibly humble people.

Suggesting that we are better than others at something makes Ricky and me uncomfortable. We are—and always have been—very humble people. Ricky’s childhood was sparse, to put it nicely, and the lack of opportunities and material items it provided forced humility upon Ricky before he could even say the word. I was a more fortunate child in terms of quantifiable possessions within my reach, but as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), I found the weight of the world to be heavy and I carried it with altruism that humbled me early on. To this day, Ricky and I can’t always recognize our value, especially when it is compared to the value of others, but when our value is so obvious that humility steps aside so we can see it, we look, and we’re gently asking you to look too.

Humbly but confidently, we believe our blog, the Costa Rica Travel Blog, is the best Costa Rica blog on the internet.

Very rarely do we brag, but if ever there was a place and time for us to do that, it’s here and now. So, here we go:

✓ First and foremost, our Costa Rica blog functions to help you make great decisions, not to help us make a living.

You may be surprised to learn that we do not earn money directly from our blog. The term for that action is “monetization”, and although it’s a smart business practice utilized by many blogs, including some Costa Rica blogs, our blog has always been and will continue to be first and foremost a tool for travelers like you, not an income stream for us. While it is possible for a blog to be both—a monetization machine and a helpful aid—unless the blog fronts a registered nonprofit, earnings, not service, is the core driving force. At the Costa Rica Travel Blog, bettering your lives, not our lives, is the core driving force. This means that the time and hard work that we put into writing and updating the hundreds of articles published on our Costa Rica blog is entirely voluntary.

✓ Our Costa Rica blog is 100% free to use, and we’re not just talking about money.

Okay, most blogs are free to use, so this argument is weak despite being valid. But what about costs other than money, like the cost of your trust or the cost of your privacy? Our blog is free in these respects too, meaning that a visit to the Costa Rica Travel Blog won’t result in broken trust or privacy lost. We delve into the actions we take to not break your trust and not violate your privacy over the first few arguments listed below.

✓ Our Costa Rica blog does not display ads and/or affiliate links, and we do not accept sponsorships.

Perhaps the best way to show you that making money isn’t our priority is to confirm that you won’t find ads, affiliate links, or sponsorships anywhere on our Costa Rica blog. We choose not to incorporate these viable income streams into our blog’s operation because we care more about earning and keeping your trust and we know that it can be difficult to trust the teachings of any source when their words or actions are linked to financial gain, especially when those words or actions are directly supplied by funders. Our Costa Rica blog silences outside influence by choosing not to care about clicks on ad banners or affiliate links. With respect to sponsorships, despite receiving weekly emails from companies asking us to model their swimwear, partner up with their sunglasses brand, or sign on to a project that would connect us with corporate clients willing to pay us to push their products, we consistently say “Thanks, but no thanks.” At the Costa Rica Travel Blog, our integrity and your trust aren’t for sale.

✓ Our Costa Rica blog does not display AI-generated text, AI-generated photos, or other AI-generated content.

No shade thrown at AI because we know it has its benefits in many realms, but within creative industries, wherein blogging exists, we believe that AI threatens artists’ voices and authenticity. If you want objective facts about Costa Rica, the national census and similar resources can provide it, and AI-generated blogs that reflect that data likely don’t cause much harm. But if you want subjective feedback about Costa Rica, including anecdotes that explain how we learned difficult lessons about traveling in Costa Rica (so you can avoid making critical mistakes), or experience coverage that includes sensations and emotions felt while engaging in particular activities (so you can fill your trip with pleasant feelings), non-AI-generated blogs, like our Costa Rica blog, are the best for that.

✓ Our blog does not disclose or sell your private personal information.

Years ago, a well-known Costa Rica blog (not ours!) disclosed in an article how they earned money from selling travelers’ email addresses, which they collected via their website. Why they would state that publicly, I have no idea (the article has since been removed and the blog claims to no longer engage in the practice), but even more perplexing is why they would sell travelers’ personal information in the first place. Obviously, money played a role. I remember feeling sickened by their action, which to me was unethical even if perfectly legal, and I vowed to never take advantage of travelers that way, or in any way for that matter. For this reason, whenever possible, our Costa Rica blog provides resources to travelers in ways that don’t require them to provide personal information to us. For example, we designed our Costa Rica Travel Blog Quick Guide to be a downloadable PDF document publicly available on our website so you don’t need to submit your email address to receive it. (Other blogs will require your email address in return for the delivery of a “free gift” or “free guide”.) The only resource that our blog offers that requires an email address is our Costa Rica Trip-Planning 101 E-course, an email-based course that travelers sign up for because they specifically want to receive emails from us. Even in that case, we do not disclose or sell your email address to anyone, the only emails you receive from us are the 11 emails associated with the E-course, and if you change your mind about receiving them, at any time you can unsubscribe from the E-course without issue.

✓ We have been blogging about Costa Rica travel and tourism longer than most people.

When Ricky and I first started blogging, our Costa Rica blog was one of only three well-known blogs about Costa Rica, and it was the only blog specifically covering travel and tourism. (Of the other two blogs, one focused on moving to and residing in Costa Rica, which targeted retirees and other potential expats more than vacationers, and the other focused on the ecology of Costa Rica, presenting topics related to flora and fauna from a scientific perspective.) Whenever a traveler turned to blogs to learn about the experience of temporarily visiting and exploring Costa Rica, they found us. Then, in the 2010s when blogs became increasingly mainstream, other Costa Rica blogs began popping up online. Later, in the 2020s with the rise of artificial intelligence, countless automated Costa Rica blogs stuffed with AI-generated content seemed to take over the internet. Although the field of reliable Costa Rica content gets watered down with the development of each new Costa Rica blog, we push back against that unhelpful change by continuing to produce original, high-value content, just like we have done for nearly 20 years.

✓ We have profound experience with and knowledge of travel and tourism in Costa Rica.

Following up on our previous argument, it’s safe to add that, because we’ve been blogging about Costa Rica for nearly two decades, we know Costa Rica extremely well. Experience, rather having enough of it to accurately and advantageously make a positive impact on the lives of other people, is an achievement that takes time to earn. We have traveled to all corners of the country and across it countless times, educating ourselves about destinations, attractions, tour experiences, beaches, accommodations, road conditions, restaurants, and so much more along the way. We’ve taken hundreds of thousands of photos, traveled tens of thousands of kilometers, and written hundreds of blog articles. And, we don’t just write about experiences, we compare experiences to help you decide which ones are the best for you.

Take hot spring experiences, for example. Would you prefer to take the advice of someone who visited two hot spring properties and claimed one is better than the other, or the advice of someone who visited 16 hot spring properties, described each one, and provided you with reasons why you might like certain properties over others? (For the record, yes, to date we have visited 16 unique hot spring properties in Costa Rica—14 in the La Fortuna area and two elsewhere in the country, here and here.) Ricky and I pride ourselves on being able to offer this expert level of extensive, comparative help on our Costa Rica blog, and there’s no denying that it’s made possible by our substantial knowledge of Costa Rica travel and tourism.

✓ Our Costa Rica expertise is vetted by distinguished organizations.

Sometimes it helps to get a second opinion. If you’d like an outsider to attest to our high level of Costa Rica knowledge, consider the following:

• We were recruited by Moon Travel Guides (led by New York-based publishing house Hachette Book Group and Berkeley-based imprint Avalon Travel) to author both their full-country guidebook Moon Costa Rica (2019, 2021, 20243, and 2025 editions; a book of approximately 600 pages) and its ‘best of’ guidebook, Moon Best of Costa Rica (2022 edition).
• We were recruited by the Rick Steves’ Europe (an American travel brand) to present Costa Rica on their Monday Night Travel show as well as some of their radio shows and podcasts.
• We were recruited by Wanderlust Magazine (a British publication) to write the 10-page cover feature on Costa Rica for their sustainability-focused “Travel Green List” issue.
• We were recruited by Essentialist (a New York-, Spain-, and Mexico-based luxury travel brand) to be their Destination Editor for Costa Rica.

✓ Our Costa Rica blog is a reflection of nearly two decades of passion-filled work, not a one-off vacation.

If for whatever reason you do not want the advice that we provide on our Costa Rica Travel Blog (we respect your decision!), for goodness’ sake, please don’t rely solely on the advice offered by bloggers who visit Costa Rica once and subsequently think they’re an expert on the country. These people tend to be avid travelers with popular travel blogs (not Costa Rica-specific travel blogs), and while they probably have great advice to offer about traveling in general given the many trips they’ve taken to various countries, with respect to their understanding of Costa Rica, they can only speak to their limited experience, which usually doesn’t extend past a 14-day visit. If you want expert advice, stick to getting advice from actual experts. In other words, seek the word of individuals who have invested years of their professional and/or personal lives in understanding how Costa Rica’s tourism industry operates and how Costa Rica vacations can be constructed in fulfilling and time-, cost-, and energy-efficient ways. These lessons may differ from those that apply to other countries, so it’s best to focus your learning on a Costa Rica-specific educator.

One way to determine if a blog you visit is a Costa Rica-specific blog or a general travel blog is to visit the blog’s homepage. If the homepage details the blogger’s worldwide travels, then their Costa Rica experience may be limited and detailed on only one or two pages across their entire website. When it is, the blogger will usually give the page(s) providing their Costa Rica content a title that suggests the information on it is the ultimate or best “Costa Rica guide” or “Costa Rica country guide”. You may also see the page reference Costa Rica’s tourism board, which hosts some popular travel bloggers and influencers in return for online posts about their Costa Rica experiences. (The bloggers/influencers are supposed to disclose that association and incentive to their readers.) Feel free to browse the information that these bloggers/influencers offer but know that the “expert” providing it to you is someone not all that unlike you—someone who merely vacationed in Costa Rica. In contrast, Ricky and I have long joked that we know absolutely nothing about the world but pretty much everything there is to know about Costa Rica. We don’t call ourselves travel bloggers, we call ourselves Costa Rica bloggers, and if you’re invested in the quality of your Costa Rica trip, you’ll soon realize that there is a big difference between the two.

✓ We aren’t influencers and we don’t care about being popular (or not being popular).

While we’re on the topic of influencers… please know that we do not consider ourselves to be influencers. In fact, we don’t work to influence, we work to inform. If you have any doubt about that, check out our social media accounts; our counts are low because we aren’t very active on social media (at least when compared to our competitors), and that’s the result of a conscious choice. Instead of fixating on our own popularity, we spend the majority of our time exploring and researching Costa Rica, updating our Costa Rica Travel Blog and other Costa Rica-related resources, and working with travelers like you one-on-one. We are focused on the quality of your travel experience, not the quantity of our followers.

✓ Our backgrounds speak volumes to the work we do and why we do it well.

Now that you know that we aren’t influencers, let’s talk about who we are and why that matters. Ricky, a born-and-raised Costa Rican, worked in coffee plantations as a child and became an award-winning tour guide as an adult. That experience matters because it not only taught him strong work ethics but also how to excel in Costa Rica’s tourism industry. I’m a multi-time published Costa Rica travel writer with a bachelor’s degree in law, a master’s degree in education, and work experience in mental health. That experience matters because it taught me to believe in fairness and right over wrong, to commit to educating others (especially in written form), and to practice compassion in everything I do. Together, Ricky and I bring several assets to our Costa Rica blog, but above all is our hard, dedicated, ethical work backed by experience and led with kindness. We look for that in people we choose to work with and support, so why wouldn’t we offer the same to travelers like you who choose to work with and support us?

✓ Our content is dual-perspective, written by a Costa Rican and an avid Costa Rica traveler.

In addition to the separate qualities that Ricky and I bring to our Costa Rica blog, we also bring two unique perspectives. Ricky brings an authentic Costa Rican perspective, lending the blog customs, traditions, and stories that showcase Costa Rica beyond tourism, and he also brings an experienced tour guide’s perspective, providing insights gathered from the tour provider’s side of touristic experiences. Having operated a Costa Rica tourism-focused corporation since 2008, and having first explored Costa Rica as a solo traveler even earlier than that, I bring formality and precision to the blog from a business owner’s perspective, and also, from a foreigner’s perspective, I bring curiosity and an awareness of the wants and needs of travelers. Although I’ve called Costa Rica my second home for nearly two decades now, I remember how it felt to experience the country for the first time, and as a solo female traveler at that. Now, one of the things that our Costa Rica blog does best is make the process of experiencing Costa Rica for the first time a positive and problem-free one for people like you. We believe that our multiple frames of reference strengthen that effort and equip us with the most comprehensive advice to share.

✓ At the risk of sounding arrogant, we are trailblazers.

Speaking of owning a business (Pura Vida! eh? Inc.), it helps to know that we created that business, which operates as a Costa Rica tour discount provider, to help Costa Rica-bound travelers reduce the cost of their trip. Not only did we see an opportunity to help travelers save money and act on it swiftly, but also we were the first people (that we know of) to help travelers save money via a tour discount operation. When we incorporated in 2008, no one else had an operation like ours, and a few companies (that we did not work with) gave us a hard time for making discounts available to travelers (the companies wanted to keep all of the money to themselves). But in the years that followed, especially during the mid-to-late 2010s, other Costa Rica bloggers caught on to what we were doing and they began offering discounts too. While they had every right to follow suit (honestly, with affordability in mind, the more discounts that are available to travelers the better), we’re proud to tell travelers that, with respect to discounts, we set the money-saving train in motion. More importantly, our motivation to offer discounts in the first place was to help travelers like you save money, not to compete with another blog. I don’t think our competitors can claim the same.

✓ We write only what we believe in and not a word more.

Above in this article, with respect to our rejection of ads and affiliate links, we make some good points in support of the argument that our words cannot be bought. But simply taking that tough stance alone isn’t enough; equally important is that the words we choose to deliver are sound. The best way we know to ensure that our words are sound is to write about what we know and nothing else. (For example, while other Costa Rica blogs might list the names of 30 hotels to stay at in La Fortuna and provide summaries of those hotels scraped from the hotels’ own websites, we prefer to comment on our specific experiences staying overnight at 13 La Fortuna hotels.) We’re fairly certain that you don’t turn to blogs for speculation (you can speculate on things yourself, no?), you turn to them for direction, and the only people who should direct a way are people who have themselves gone down it (ideally more than once). At the Costa Rica Travel Blog, we choose not to go beyond our purview by limiting our direction to what we know from firsthand experience. That way, whenever we do direct, our readers (like you!) know that our lead is worth following.

✓ We don’t regurgitate information, we write about our unique experiences.

Remember when I mentioned above that countless AI-stuffed Costa Rica blogs had taken over the internet? Well, a lot of those blogs (plus other, non-AI-generated Costa Rica blogs that lack creativity) simply paste or paraphrase text, typically the same mundane facts that are widely available elsewhere online. To confirm, whenever we write an article, we ground it in our personal experience—and we never look at, let alone copy from, other Costa Rica blogs—so we can be sure that the resulting content isn’t a vapid representation of preexisting content.

✓ Our Costa Rica blog is the one that (flatteringly) other Costa Rica resources steal from.

We’ve had our fair share of clashes with Costa Rica websites that have flat out stolen our content without assigning proper credit. Some stole our photos and others stole our words. (We even had a B-grade Costa Rican “newspaper” paste full articles of ours onto their website and assign writing credit to their own employee). While plagiarism is illegal and downright frustrating when experienced, it is also flattering and reveals a truth about our competitors: That they (rightly) feel that our work outshines theirs. Yikes! Costa Rica Travel Blog: 1; other Costa Rica websites: 0. While we’re keeping score of things… The number of times that our Costa Rica blog has plagiarized other writers’ content: 0. How we wish other writers would show us the same respect!

✓ Our Costa Rica blog displays hundreds of photos that support our comments and experiences.

One way for us to prove that we actually have the Costa Rica experiences that we say we do is by displaying photos of those experiences on our Costa Rica blog, especially photos of us actively participating in the experiences. For this reason, you’ll find nearly every article on our Costa Rica Travel Blog is accompanied by photos of Ricky and me. Although we risk annoying you with so many photos, we hope you get their message: that Ricky and I don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk.

✓ Our Costa Rica blog does not use stock photos; all photos were taken by us, by hand, during our travels.

In addition to displaying photos of Ricky and me, the Costa Rica Travel Blog displays a wide variety of helpful photos, from photos of hotel rooms and nature trails to restaurant meals and beaches, and all of those photos were taken personally by us throughout our travels. Some Costa Rica websites rely on stock photos (i.e., not their own photos) for visualizations, and while that’s okay, doing so sends the message (or serves as evidence) that the website doesn’t have its own cache of photos to pull from. If you consider that the purpose of a travel blog should be to help people discover what particular travel experiences are like, photos play an integral role in carrying out that purpose, and when they’re absent, readers are left to wonder why. With our Costa Rica blog, there is no wondering: we went, we did, we reported, and we displayed the evidence. Things don’t get much more clear cut than that.

✓ Our Costa Rica blog does not rely on distant aerial/drone photography to simulate experiences.

Before we leave the topic of photos, a quick word about drone photography… we purposely don’t use it. Sure, aerial photography can be stunning and in a coffee table book I could stare at it all day, but when it comes to documenting Costa Rica in a visual form for the purpose of helping travelers, we much prefer to snap photos at ground level while inside attractions and actively exploring. You can learn so much more from photos taken this way:

• What nature trails look like, including whether the forest floor is clear or strewn with debris, whether steps are solid or breaking apart, whether there is a handrail to hold onto, and whether the trail is wide and open-feeling or narrow and claustrophobic-feeling.
• What an area’s flora/landscape looks like (dense, wide and expansive; full of tall trees or cool trees like ceiba trees and/or strangler fig trees; and/or adorned with flowers that can increase bird sightings).
• What on-site facilities look like, including entrances, trailheads, bathrooms, reception desks, tour desks, and ticket wickets, so you know what to look for when you arrive.
• Plus, photos taken at ground level allow you to capture cool moments, like wildlife sightings.

In contrast, aerial photography misses all of that. There’s something else that aerial/drone photography does: it gives some bloggers an excuse to avoid spending time and money on the actual exploration of attractions. It’s no surprise that capturing videos from above a site of interest is a faster and cheaper means of “covering” the site (i.e., collecting content about the site) than actually paying the site’s entrance fee and physically checking out the site’s interior. In this regard, convenience, which makes life easier for bloggers but can disadvantage their readers, is a real concern. Any Costa Rica resource that isn’t willing to go where it’s willing to send you is one that should be used with caution, in my opinion. At the Costa Rica Travel Blog, we go where you might go. Quite literally, we have (hiking) boots on the ground just about everywhere.

✓ The content on our Costa Rica blog is (mostly) current.

This argument comes with a disclaimer: Costa Rica’s travel and tourism industry is robust and changes take place daily. While it is impossible to keep the hundreds of articles on our Costa Rica blog up-to-date at all times, it is a priority of ours to keep as many articles as possible as up-to-date as possible. Keeping us incredibly active in this regard is our work with Moon Travel Guides, which requires us to travel the country regularly in search of changes to be reflected in new editions of their Costa Rica guidebooks, which are authored by us. So, you can count on us to always be on the lookout for changes you’d appreciate knowing about. And, for what it’s worth, Ricky reads Costa Rica’s leading newspaper (La Nación) daily, so that engagement also keeps us in the loop regarding changes and things coming down the pike.

A conscious choice of ours is to include a “last modified” date at the top of every article on our blog so you can track our updates. Note, however, that an older date posted on our website doesn’t automatically indicate that the page’s article is outdated; it may just mean that an update isn’t necessary because the article’s content remains valid.

✓ Our Costa Rica blog takes steps to save you time.

We have performed several actions to create a Costa Rica blog that doesn’t waste your time. For one, we created the Costa Rica Travel Blog Quick Guide, a downloadable document that contains clickable links to most of our articles, which are arranged by category for easy navigation. Simply open the document and click on the topic that interests you, and you’ll instantly be taken to our related article. Alternatively, our website’s menu (near the top of the blog), arranges most of our articles by category, so you can use it to narrow your search and find the content you need. If you’re looking for information on a topic not addressed by our menu, use the search bar (also near the top of the blog) to try and locate it. In the event that you stumble upon an old article with a broken link and you receive a “404/page not found” error, don’t worry. We have configured our 404 error page to provide a list of all active blog articles so you can easily scroll through the list and find the article at its new link/location. At the Costa Rica Travel Blog, we know that Costa Rica trip planning can be time-consuming and life in general can be busy. Quickly connecting you with the Costa Rica information you need is incredibly important.

✓ We respect your needs and work to meet them.

There are several ways that we set out to meet your needs, but I’ll share two of them here. The first is that we talk openly about your needs (as well as your wants and interests) in our Costa Rica blog articles. Whenever we tackle a topic with a superlative in the title (articles that start with “The Best” x, y, or z, for example), we make it clear that our goal is to help you decide for yourself which experience (x, y, or z) is the best for you and your travel group. We could tell you which experience is the best for us, but because your needs differ from ours, that information wouldn’t be as beneficial as information that helps you narrow down the various options and draw your own conclusions.

A second way that we set out to meet your needs is by offering blog articles in audio form. Technically, our audio publications form a podcast, not a blog, but if you’re familiar with our podcast, the Costa Rica Travel Podcast, you already know that it isn’t a traditional podcast (there are no cohosts, back-and-forth dialogue, or interviewees), instead it is an audio/spoken depiction of our blog’s content. We decided to record several of our blog articles as audio files so that those of you who, for whatever reason, want or need to learn by listening (as opposed to reading) can access our content that way.

✓ We are award-winning bloggers.

Truth be told, we’re not keen on the concept of awards denoting value, but we do appreciate the recognition when it’s offered. You can see a list of all our awards on our homepage, but one that’s particularly cool is my “Travel Blogger of the Year” award.

✓ We are well-liked within Costa Rica’s travel and tourism industry.

More important to us than winning awards is earning the respect of our readers/clients and colleagues. We hope (and believe) that we do that regularly. If you want to see photos of us with some of our industry colleagues, please see this article. If you want to read testimonials from past Costa Rica Travel Blog readers and clients, please see this article.

✓ Lastly, our Costa Rica blog is built on love.

In our collective world, which often feels hate-filled, leading with love matters. Ricky and I are full of love—for each other, for our work, for Ricky’s homeland, and for the travelers who choose Costa Rica above all other countries as their vacation destination. If for no other reason outlined above in this article, we hope you decide that our Costa Rica Travel Blog is the best Costa Rica blog because we created it for you with immense love. Or, because we’re lovely people, perhaps even adorable people. We do have a matching outfit after all. 😉

Pura vida!

Hey, Costa Rica Travel Blog reader, thank you for visiting and reading our blog! We're truly grateful for your time and preference.

Do you know that your spam-free reading experience is most important to us? Unlike some other Costa Rica blogs, we do not to sell your personal information, and we choose not to display ads, sponsored content, or affiliate marketing on our blog so we can keep your visit as distraction- and junk-free as possible. Because we prioritize your privacy, we don't earn money when you visit us, when you sign up for our e-course, or when you click on our links, which means the time and work we put into this blog—including its 300+ articles—is entirely voluntary! If you find our content valuable, and you'd like to thank us for making the trip-planning process easier and your Costa Rica vacation more enjoyable, please consider making a small donation ($1, $2, $3, or an amount of your choosing) to our blog. Doing so is a great way to pat us on the back if you feel we deserve it. 😊 Pura vida, amigos!

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