If San Salvador were hosed down, all the shacks cleared and the people rehoused in tidy bungalows, the buildings painted, the stray dogs collared and fed, the children given shoes, the trash picked up in the parks, the soldiers pensioned off—there is no army in Costa Rica—and all the political prisoners released, those cities would, I think, begin to look a little like San José. In El Salvador I had chewed the end of my pipestem to pieces in frustration. In San José I was able to have a new pipestem fitted . . . [Costa Rica] was that sort of place.

Paul Theroux portrays a litany of places one might want to avoid in his highly entertaining and incisive book The Old Patagonian Express, describing his journey south by rail from Massachusetts to Tierra del Fuego. But Costa Rica is different. One of his characters sums it up. Freshly arrived in San José, the capital city, Theroux finds himself talking to a Chinese man in a bar. The man—a Costa Rican citizen—had left his homeland in 1954 and traveled widely throughout the Americas. He disliked every country he had seen except one. “What about the United States?” Theroux asked. “I went all around it,” replied the man. “Maybe it is a good country, but I don’t think so. I could not live there. I was still traveling, and I thought to myself, ‘What is the best country?’ It was Costa Rica—I liked it very much here. So I stayed.”

The temptations and appeals of this tiny nation are so abundant that an estimated 40,000 North American citizens and an equal number of other nationals (constituting more than 2 percent of Costa Rica’s population) have moved here in recent years and now call Costa Rica home, attracted by financial incentives and a quality of life among the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Costa Rica isn’t simply one of the world’s best-kept travel secrets; it’s also a great place to live.

For years travelers had neglected this exciting yet peaceful nation, primarily because of a muddled grasp of Central American geopolitics. While its neighbors have been racked by turmoil, Costa Rica has been blessed with a remarkable normalcy—few extremes of wealth and poverty, no standing army, and a proud history as Central America’s most stable democracy.

Ticos—as the friendly, warmhearted Costa Ricans are known—pride themselves on having more teachers than policemen, a higher male life expectancy than does the United States, an egalitarianism and strong commitment to peace and prosperity, and an education and social-welfare system that should be the envy of many developed nations. Even the smallest town is electrified, water most everywhere is potable, and the telecommunications system is the best in Latin America. In 1990, the United Nations declared Costa Rica the country with the best human-development index among underdeveloped nations—and in 1992, it was taken off the list of underdeveloped nations altogether. No wonder National Geographic called it the “land of the happy medium.”

Despite its diminutive size (the country is about as big as Nova Scotia, or as Vermont and New Hampshire put together), Costa Rica proffers more beauty and adventure per acre than any other country on earth. It is in fact a kind of microcontinent unto itself. The diversity of terrain—most of it supremely beautiful—is remarkable. Costa Rica is sculpted to show off the full potential of the tropics. You can journey, as it were, from the Amazon to a Swiss alpine forest simply by starting in a Costa Rican valley and walking uphill. Within a one-hour journey from San José, the capital city, the tableau metamorphoses from dense rainforest to airy deciduous forest, montane cloud forest swathing the slopes of towering volcanoes, dry open savanna, lush sugarcane fields, banana plantations, rich cattle ranches set in deep valleys, rain-soaked jungle, lagoons, estuaries, and swamps teeming with wildlife in the northern lowlands. The verdant rainforest spills down the steep mountains to greet the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, where dozens of inviting beaches remain unspoiled by footprints, and in places offshore coral reefs open up a world more beautiful than a casket of gems.

Costa Rica’s varied ecosystems—particularly its tropical rainforests—are a naturalist’s dream. Unlike many destinations, where man has driven the animals into the deepest seclusion, Costa Rica’s wildlife seems to love to put on a song-and-dance. Animals and birds are prolific and in many cases relatively easy to spot—sleek jaguars on the prowl, tattered moth-ridden sloths moving languidly among the high branches, scarlet macaws that fall from their perches and go squalling away, coatimundis, toucans, brightly colored tree frogs, and other exotic species in abundance. That sudden flutter of blue is a giant morpho butterfly. That mournful two-note whistle is the quetzal, the tropical birder’s Holy Grail. The pristine forests and jungles are full of arboreal sounds that are, according to one writer, “music to a weary ecotraveler’s ears.” You can almost feel the vegetation growing around you. There is a sense of life at flood tide.

The nation’s 12 distinct ecological zones are home to an astonishing array of flora and fauna—approximately 5 percent of all known species on earth in a country that occupies less than 0.003 percent of its land area—including more butterfly species than in the whole of Africa, and more than twice the number of bird species than in the whole of the United States—in colors so brilliant that their North American cousins seem drab by comparison. Stay here long enough and you’ll begin to think that with luck you might, like Noah, see examples of all the creatures on earth.

Scuba divers, anglers, golfers, spa addicts, kayakers and whitewater rafters, hikers, surfers, honeymoon romantics, and every other breed of escape artist can also find nirvana in Costa Rica. The adventure travel industry here has matured into one of the world’s finest.

For better or worse, Costa Rica has also burst into blossom as a contender on the international beach-resort scene. The nation boasts any number of supremely attractive resorts, civilized hotels, and rustic lodges and cabinas where, lazing in a hammock dramatically overlooking the beach, you might seriously contemplate giving up everything back home and settling down to while away the rest of your days enjoying the never-winter climate.

¡Pura vida!