Here are the available villas for rental in Costa Rica.

Best preserved rainforest in Central America

Wedged between Nicaragua and Panama and lapped by the Caribbean on one side and the Pacific on the other, Costa Rica seems an impossibly exotic destination.

Yet it is the most stable republic in Central America, and boasts both golden beaches and spectacular rainforests.
And with return air fares from London as low as £500 even at the height of the season, is an intriguing new experience waiting to be explored.
Most flights land at San Jose Airport, but you are unlikely to want to hang around the capital for any longer than is strictly necessary.
San Jose's centre is rundown and fairly shoddy, and its bargain stores have all the ambience of downtown Peckham.
Yet before you leave it's worth paying a quick visit to the Teatro National, a gorgeously ornate concert hall that is San Jose's most impressive landmark.
Once you have coughed up for the flight the rest of your stay in Central America will be absurdly cheap.
Costa Rica is not quite as poor as its immediate neighbours but its currency, the colone, is so devalued that most hotels and stores prefer payment in American dollars.
Even the Hotel Grano De Oro, a gorgeous converted colonial house on San Jose's outskirts, will give you a double room for £50. More from hotelgranodeoro.com.
Beach bums will head straight for Playa Tamarindo - you can fly from San Jose to Liberia for a mere £30, then hire a car. The area has a decided tourist trap element, but the Pacific waves are perfect for a surfing lesson, and the beaches are glorious. ... more

The bird man of Costa Rica

Marcellino is a bird man. A real Bird Man. You only have to walk a few yards into the Costa Rican forest fringe with him to understand it.
A flicker of dark tail dashes into a bush and Marcellino announces: 'There. Did you see? A slaty flower piercer.' He cocks his head on one side. 'Hear that? It's a long-tailed silky flycatcher.'
And, sure enough, two fly out of a tree ahead of us. Then suddenly, like Richard Wilson on speed, our dapper little bird guide clutches his head and declares emotionally: 'Oh my God, I don't believe it. Look, look an ochraceous wren.'
The man's knowledge is all-encompassing, his enthusiasm utterly captivating.
He makes a little 'tsk, tsk' noise between his teeth and birds call back to him and pop out from the bushes to be admired - a yellow-thighed finch, a collared redstart, a spectacle-cheeked tanager.
Later Marcellino, eyes gleaming, focused his telescope and beckoned us.
There, perched on a favourite mini-avocado tree, was the creature everybody comes to Costa Rica to see, the resplendent quetzal, a bird so self-confidently handsome, so spectacular in its iridescent green, blue and red colouring, so luxuriantly fitted out with its long, plumed tail that it quite takes your breath away.
Magical, and for an amateur birder like me in a small Central American country with 850 resident species there were endless magical moments.
From a near-silent boat slipping along the canal and river networks of Tortugero National Park on the Caribbean coast it was a case of never mind the rain.
The huge, lush trees and creepers in every shade of green made it feel like gliding through Jurassic Park.
I watched enthralled as a tiger heron in mating ritual first extended his neck skyward, ramrod straight, giving a passable imitation of a yard-of-ale glass, and then coiled it back into his chest and puffed it out to impress his lady.
Next morning I stepped out of my room to see perched on the palm branch above me a huge spectacled owl, about the size of a labrador, gazing implacably at us like a hanging judge.
Soon after dawn one morning at the peak of the cloud forest above San Gerardo de Dota I was about to swat away what I had first taken to be a bee behind my ear when I realised that the sound was in fact the fast-beating, electric-fan wings of a tiny volcano hummingbird, about the size of my thumb. ... more