Getting to know Costa Rica

Ive not been fortunate enough to visit Costa Rica...Yet.
To understand this new location in my world I started looking through Google.
The best links ive found are.

The Information in wikipedia is limited compared to my China experiences. This site describes some of the historical and cultural info, relevent to our project.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rica.
Wikipedia is also gret for EVs

The CIA world factbook is a heartless series of facts and figures. I use ther resource because i believe we can get some positive information form an otherwise questionable institution. The interesting Data is about Population, education on the people side and industries, infrastructure and transport networks that exist there.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cs.html

I havent delved into Lonely planet as yet, but theses guys have never let me down. The Issue here is I find that "Tourists consume tourist culture", travellers have slightly less pleasent experiences and very few people actually have home stays and work on the farms.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/central-america/costa-rica/

The American NGOs like costa rica so there are a bunch of sites where i found stories of great adventures with some community service involvment. Emailing some of these guys may get some first hand experiences, like exactly how hard it i to dragg a bogged car out of the mud...