Budget Travel Book

Harvard sends its best on the backroads and crowded highways of the world to help fellow students find a better way.

Let's Go is an apt and eye-catching name for this immensely popular series of annually updated guidebooks. It gives you the feel for youth, enthusiasm and boundless travel.

This Costa Rica volume is one of more than forty titles in the series. Those busy students research and rewrite in painstaking detail. They travel -- as do most of their readers -- without benefit of freebies or expense accounts.

Contributors might be young, but they are not without knowledge and savvy. Their challenge in a country like Costa Rica is to explain language and cultural differences to readers with wide variations of understanding. This they do with a sound, middle-of-the-road approach that neither confuses nor patronizes.

Unlike some other guides, Let's Go doesn't skimp on maps. But those maps never overwhelm you with needless detail.

This is not the guidebook to buy if you seek mid-range accommodations on a regular basis. Travelers who mix comfort and economy might need a second source.

But Let's Go is a common companion for thousands who want the sightseeing without the big tab.

That success creates a new problem.

Follow the advice here, and you'll also be trailing lots of other readers. So use the suggestions in moderation: follow their leads to a great day in the national park, but discover a thrifty hotel stay or restaurant on your own once in a while, too!