Costa Rica

I flew to San José to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which is a pretty good reason to visit a country. The show was great. The country was better. I stayed on long after the concert, moving between cloud forest, volcano towns and the Pacific beaches, where the surf is as good as everyone says and the sunsets come with howler monkeys yelling in the trees.

Costa Rica runs on "pura vida". People say it as hello, goodbye, thanks and no worries, and after a few days you're saying it too. Sloths hang from the trees along the road, toucans show up at breakfast, and the rain comes in hard every afternoon and then just stops. It's not the cheapest country in Central America, but it's the easiest, and it's the one that got me hooked on the region.