I'm planning a trip to CR in late May but I'm a little stunned reading all the trip reports here to see people paying a lot of money for their activities throughout the day - $7 or $15 just to enter waterfall hikes, $30, $40 and $50 for guided tours of wildlife areas. Is it possible to do CR in a more down-n-dirty, self guided, FREE fashion? My partner and I both speak decent Spanish and have self-toured in plenty of other Latin America countries...I am just struck that CR is starting to seem particularly "packaged."

Costa Rica has definitely adapted to the influx of American Tourists, but if you speak Spanish and are willing to go it alone, you can definitely do it cheaper. Also, just about every guide we met down there was willing to "negotiate". Some people will just pay $50 for a guided tour, I think when we were there, we negotiated an awesome fully guided tour of the rain forest for for $50 bucks for our group of 6 (a little over $8 per person). To find better deals, you may just have to go a little further off the beaten path or speak to some locals about it. For the "free" fashion you're looking for, you'll still have to pay some entrance fees to the larger national parks.

There are plenty of opportunities if you know where the places are! Just ask the same question with a different heading. You'll get plenty of responses. Lots of hidden waterfalls, known mostly to the locals, great hiking trails for do it your selfers, etc.

That said, doing SOME things with an experienced guide can really add to the learning experience if you are interested in, for example, the complexities of the rain forest.

When I was there last I felt very safe moving around by jeep.. although it was slow going because the roads are wild and terrible. I think having your own transportation is liberating if you can stomach the uncertainty of the roads. One thing that struck me as odd was that even in fairly remote areas we kept passing "Century 21" real estate for sale signs in English that were targeted towards foreigners.. kind of incongruous with some guy tending his goats next door.. but i think it shows how open the place has become to foreigners.
Here's a map of all the hotels in the country and their average prices in us dollars. Might help you plan your route.
http://www.HotelMapSearch.com/?llz=9...2331,9&m=m

As for price I'm not sure how cheap you want to go on accommodations but meals were very reasonable away from the resort restaurants and as other users have said the guides seemed open to negotiation. Might try going in the off season.. I'm not sure when that is but I bet May could be a bit less busy than June map because many American kids will still be wrapping up spring semester.

I agree with shillmac; there may be a few things you'll want to do with a guide to enhance your visit, but there are lots of parks and hiking areas where you can just do your own thing.

National parks and many recreational areas will charge a modest fee for entry. We visited Los Chorros waterfall near Alajuela last December, which is one of those off-the-beaten-track kind of places. It cost about 4$ per person to get into the recreation area. The falls were beautiful and not crowded at all. A group of locals were swimming in the river, and there was a picnic area available for packing in a lunch.

Costa Rica has a pretty established tourism infrastructure in place, which has pros and cons depending on what you want from a vacation. I'm sure it's more expensive to visit than it's neighboring Central American countries, but I haven't found it to be outrageously expensive. Certainly not compared to lots of other destinations in Europe or North America.

Be careful going cheap on zipline tours: canopy zipline tours are great, but make sure you get a good location. My father and brother did an amazing zipline tour in a preserve. my wife and I signed up for one through our hotel and it ended up being a little lame.. it was run by the hotel belhop and was just a few crossings over the
ravine near the hotel