Beginning to Plan a Vacation

Earlier this week, I met up with a former co-worker for after work drinks. I hadn't seen her much since I left the company where she still works two years ago, and we've been keeping in touch mostly over email and Facebook. It was nice to catch up, and interesting because we're both sort of looking for a place to buy. Actually, we spent a lot of time talking about saving money which is kind of funny. :)

She's gotten to do some travel for work, and she was telling me about a recent trip to Costa Rica, which (along with an article in the New York Times earlier this week) got me thinking. I have always wanted to go to Costa Rica to see the amazing Cloud rainforest and go zip-lining. It seems like there's a lot to do there, and my friend said it isn't really that expensive. The roundtrip flight is only about $100 more than I paid to go to Ft Myers, actually. I worked it out, and I think that at most it would cost about $1,000 to go for 6-7 days, and that's including everything. I have this money now, but I haven't really done any research yet.

C is interested in Costa Rica, but hoping we can get the cost down (which I'm fairly confident we can, though I haven't looked into this at all yet). He's never traveled outside of the US, though, and he'd rather go to Europe. I've been to Europe a couple of times (and I lived in France for six months during college during a study abroad jaunt), and I love it, but I'd rather go somewhere new that isn't crazy expensive.

My plan is to start looking into Costa Rica to figure out some logistics; what's the best time to go? Where can you stay both cheaply and comfortably? How far away are the different things I'd want to do while I'm there? What's the best way to get around? What kinds of budget recommendations are there for places to stay/things to do/things to see? Over the next couple of months, I'm hoping to get answers to all of these questions and start planning the trip.