We just got back from a Costa Rica Family Vacation. Loved it!!!! We went to Manuel Antonio, the kids loved the squirrel monkeys, they call them Mono Titi. They are so small that they fit in your hand.

Manuel Antonio is connected to its bedroom community of Quepos. M.A. is the high brow upmarket tourist trap (with beautiful beaches and nice waves), while Quepos is where the locals live and the vagabonds hang out. Quepos has its own waterfront, buts its not nearly as nice as M.A.’s. Luckily its full of $5 hotels and cheap food stalls and has $.25 buses running back and forth between the two towns constantly. I spent a week in Quepos during a 6month Central America tramp, slept there, grabbed breakfast, and then hopped the morning bus each day to M.A. for a day of fun in the sun. Not my favorite area in Costa Rica (that would be the Talamanca mountains from Chirripo down to the Panamanian border), but its not a bad place either. Quepos has some pretty cool cantinas with good live music if you’re not a teetotaler. In my opinion M.A./Quepos is a lot better than Jaco, which is probably it’s closest competitor (then again it was the rainy/off season by the time I reached Costa Rica so the country wasn’t crowded).