How to see Costa Rica's true colours

If you’re going to visit Costa Rica, my advice is to steer clear of all the stuff that looks most exciting in the brochure: the zip-wires, the thermal springs and the white-water rafting. I’m not saying you won’t enjoy it. Nor realistically – especially if you’ve kids in tow – are you likely to be able to avoid it. Just be aware, though, that the best bits, as always, are the ones most tourists don’t see. Corcovado National Park in the remote south-west, for example.

Well, I say ‘remote’. But actually, oddly enough for a country swathed in rainforest, hardly anywhere is truly inaccessible because of the remarkably good roads and the even more impressive local airline. There are reasonably priced, regular flights in not-scary propeller-driven aircraft from the pleasant but dull capital San Jose to all corners of the country: the palm-fringed, turtle-teeming beaches of the Caribbean coast; the cool surf hangouts on the Pacific coast; the gorgeously lush bit in the middle which takes you up to the Cloud Forest and the Arenal volcano; and – my particular recommendation – the much more rarely visited Osa Peninsula near the southern border with Panama.