8 Places to Visit and Things to Do in Costa Rica Off The Beaten Path withoutapath.com

A comprehensive travel guide on places to visit and things to do in Costa Rica off the beaten path with tips on hiking, white water rafting, and some of the best hotels to spend the night.

Costa Rica was my home for 10 months and as such holds a very special place in my heart, a place typically reserved exclusively for my family, hoppy beer, and chorizo. Millions of travelers flock to Costa Rica every year for their own slice of the utopic narrative that the tourism industry has been so successful at developing over the past couple of decades. Costa Rica is, without a question, the king of Central American tourism.

Of course, there’s more to this narrative than meets the eye, as we’ll touch on briefly in this guide. But if you’re interested in a more in-depth look, do check out my book Talking Tico: (Mis)adventures of a Gringo in and Around Costa Rica. This travelogue covers my 10 months of living in Costa Rica and traveling around Central America with bits of history, culture, language, and insights into Costa Rica that go well-beyond the guidebooks and tourist brochures.

While most of the country’s prime locations for travel have already been written about to death by travel guides, there are still a good number of destinations that you can visit without feeling the overbearing wrath of mass tourism, like February in Manuel Antonio National Park. In this off the beaten path travel guide to Costa Rica, we’ll be looking at the Orosi Valley, beach towns like Brasilito and Santa Teresa, underappreciated national parks, the capital city of San José, and the very place I called home for 10 months, Ciudad Colón. By the time you’re doing scrolling through, you’ll be on your way to planning your own off the beaten path trip for Costa Rica.