Hi! We are planning a trip to Costa Rica for 5 days. 3 couples, some beach bums, sport fishers, scuba divers. We were going to go all inclusive but, reading the forum a little, it seems to be a bad choice?? First time there for all 6 of us. I would like to experience the beauty of CR but I am not sure where to begin.

Are you sure you definitely want to go to CR? If I were into SCUBA, I'd take a look at Belize. There aren't a lot of AIs in CR, but there are a few on the Guanacaste beaches.

We do! Scuba is just an option for my husband who has never gone, but really wants to try it. So not "into" scuba just as an option.

There are so many beautiful parts of CR and each are different from each other. Manuel Antonio is a beautiful area, with all of the activities you're looking for - sport fishing, scuba (though Cano Island a couple hours away has diving comparable to any site in the Caribbean), and the beaches are beautiful for those beach bums

Jaco and Dominical are each about an hour away in each direction, you could check them out too. Jaco is going to be a bit more "Americanized" and Dominical will have less people, things more spread out.

We've stayed in Manuel Antonio; I really enjoyed it.

Cano Island really does NOT have "diving comparable to any site in the Caribbean"; not by any stretch of the imagination.

Ash, I was curious about Cano Island - can you give a little more info.? What is the water clarity like, and what can you see? Are there colorful tropical fish, turtles, etc. or big sea life like rays and sharks? We haven't found good snorkeling in CR. Haven't tried diving.