Oh darn, I thought you were inviting us to come along.

LOL!

We're planning a trip to Merida, Mexico and found the govt puts out a great travel mag for visitors.

I tried to do a quick google search and found this online mag. It might help.

We also checked out about 5 travel books on the area from the library. It was really useful to skim thru all of them and make a list of the top 10 things each suggested to do. It helped to narrow things down. Also, a couple of the books listed what to do if you have a week, 2 weeks, etc. Then we looked up the stops suggested in all the books and added some and eliminated others.

I spent a year travelling in Guatemala when I was in my 20's and met many Costa Rican's while I was there. They were some of the nicest, most generous people I met that whole year. This was 20 years ago and I was a blonde woman travelling on my own. The Costa Rican's I met treated me with such respect and always made me feel at home and safe. I am very jealous. I always said I would do a trip to Costa Rica, but it's still somewhere in the future. I bet you'll have an amazing time.

Here is a link that might be useful: travel mag

Thanks Daisy, that is worth looking into. The travel agent got back to me and is getting together a few options in a few different price points.
My husband loved when we went to Hawaii with Perillo. They take all the guess work out of traveling and since this trip is also for his birthday, I want him to feel stress free.

We love Costa Rica! We stayed at the (Marriott) Hotel Los Suenos which is right on the beach on the Pacific side and is a very good hotel surrounded by a network of pools. It is very pretty and has good food. We went on a zip line canopy tour and on a kayak trip that included snorkeling off some rocks. The fish were incredibly colorful!
One of our best memories was a visit to Villa Caletas which is one of the most romantic and beautiful places you can imagine. They have a Roman style amphitheater built into the hillside where you can sit, enjoy a drink and watch the most fabulous sunsets over the Pacific 1000 feet below, while listening to stirring music. The restaurant is good too. We intend to return to Costa Rica and would love to stay at Villa Caletas! Please check out the photos on the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Villa Caletas Costa Rica

ellendi here is the link for Los Suenos.

Here is a link that might be useful: Los Suenos - Costa Rica

Thanks, I will check this out. Sis3, you basically stayed on he Pacific side? The agent I spoke to said we could break the trip up and do both sides. She also said to not rent a car because the roads are dirt roads and hard to drive on. Did you find this to be true?

The roads aren't great but they were OK between the airport in San Jose and Los Suenos. We were with a group so transportation was organized for us. We took a short private taxi ride up to Villa Caletas, it was well worth it!
You may find a week too short to split your time between the two sides of Costa Rica, especially if you want to see and do things and have some relaxation.

Go to Tripadvisor.com and do some real research on what people who know the country, the hotels, the restaurants and things to do are saying about their personal experiences there. I never plan any trip anymore without doing major research there. Thanks to this site and it's sister site, CruiseCritic.com, we've had great trips to Hawaii, St. Thomas, Tortola, Galveston, Hilton Head, Outer Banks, Mackinaw Island, Tucson, Sedona, a Caribbean cruise, etc. I haven't found a place yet that I can't get good advice about where to stay, where to eat (and not eat) and things to do.
Here's the link directly to the Costa Rica section to start you off:
"TripAdvisor.com"
Lynn

Yes, I know about trip advisor, thanks Lynn. I like hearing personal experiences from people here as they will have no affiliation with the hotels etc.
For fun, I put in resturants in my town in trip advisor. Two were rated high and I know they are just average or below.
But, good to hear that you have had great experiences with them.

We went to CR and enjoyed it....but we went with a tour so I couldn't really tell you exactly where we went or where we stayed. This was probably 10 yrs ago and the country is reasonably safe, but not for property crime as a lot of Nicaraguans who are unemployed find their way in and steal. Every house every where we went in CR had bars on all the windows.

We went with tauck tours. Not that you want to take a tour, but they do a great job and have been doing it for years so they clearly know the highlights and most enjoyable must sees. The tour linked below is not the one we took....ours included panama and a sail boat cruise through the canal. But it may give you some ideas of where to go and what to see and where to stay.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tauck CR

I was surprised to see my post pop back up! We did go to Costa Rica in January. We loved it and are going back again next winter.
I used a company called AnywhereCostaRica. They helped me plan my whole trip including transportation to and fro. It was specifically tailored to us. I will be using them again and I highly recommend them for anyone going to Costa Rica

I also use Tripadvisor when I travel. If you use their forums you will find reviews and recommendations from travelers who know the area, not paid schills.

We stayed at the Four Seasons Papagayo. It is a beautiful resort, no surprise. However, it is remote from just about everything. It takes like a half an hour just to drive out of the place!

It has everything you could want, but if you want to really site see I'd only spend part of the time there.

We did some tours with Pura Vida which gets raves on Tripadvisor. They were perfectly nice but I don't think a rave ...

Have fun.