In sharp contrast to the brutal internal conflicts
in Guatemala or the grinding poverty of Nicaragua, Costa Rica has
become synonymous with stability and prosperity - Costa Ricans
enjoy the highest rate of literacy, health care, education and life
expectancy
in the isthmus. Unlike so many of its neighbours, the country has
a long democratic tradition of free and open elections, no standing
army (it was abolished in 1948) and even a Nobel Peace Prize to
its name, won by former president, Oscar Arias, a key architect in
the
Peace Plan that helped bring an end to the conflicts in the region
during the 1980s.
In recent years Costa Rica has also become the prime eco-tourism
destination in Central America, if not in all the Americas, due
in no small part to an efficient promotion machine that trumpets the
country's complex system of national parks and wildlife refuges.
Every year hundreds of thousands of visitors - mainly from the
United
States and Canada - come to walk trails through million-year-old
rainforests , raft foaming whitewater rapids, surf on the Pacific
beaches and climb the volcanoes that punctuate the country's mountainous
spine. More than anything it is the enduring natural beauty that
impresses. Milk-thick twilight and dawn mists gather in the clefts
and ridges divided by high mountain passes; on the Pacific coast,
carmine and mauve sunsets splash down into the sea like meteors;
vaulting canopy trees and thick deciduous understoreys carpet large
areas of undisturbed rainforest, and vestiges of high-altitude
cloudforest offer glimpses into a misty, primeval universe, home to
the jaguar,
the lumbering Jurassic tapir and the truly resplendent quetzal. |
