Though nowhere in the country is further than nine hours' drive from San Jose, the far north and the far south are less visited than other regions. The broad alluvial plains of the Zona Norte are often overlooked, despite featuring active Volcan Arenal, which spouts and spews within sight of the friendly tourist hangout of Fortuna, affording arresting night-time scenes of blood-red lava illuminating the sky. Off-the-beaten-path travellers and serious hikers will be happiest in the rugged Zona Sur , home to Mount Chirripo, the highest point in the country. Further south, on the outstretched feeler of the Osa Peninsula, Parque Nacional Corcovado protects the last significant area of tropical wet forest on the Pacific coast of the isthmus and is probably the best destination in the country for walkers - and also one of the few places where you have a fighting chance of seeing some of the wildlife for which Costa Rica is famed.

In the northwest, the cattle-ranching province of Guanacaste is often called "the home of Costa Rican folklore", and sabanero (cowboy) culture dominates here, with exuberant rag-tag rodeos and large cattle haciendas. Limon province, on the Caribbean coast, is the polar opposite to traditional ladino Guanacaste, home to the descendants of the Afro-Caribbeans who came to Costa Rica at the end of the nineteenth century to work on the San Jose-Limon railroad - their language (Creole English), Protestantism and the West Indian traditions remain relatively intact to this day.

Close to the Pacific coast , Monteverde has become the country's number-one tourist attraction, pulling in the visitors who flock here to walk trails through some of the last remaining cloudforest in the Americas. Further down the coast is the popular beach of Manuel Antonio, with its picture-postcard ocean setting, plus the equally pretty but far less touristed beaches of Samara and Nosara on the Nicoya Peninsula.