This trip offers incredible variety in just two weeks. You start in the coffee hills above San José. Rather than the busy towns and resorts clustered around Arenal, your time in the volcanic highlands is spent at a luxury retreat nestled in tropical forest, with hot springs in a naturally heated river. You then transfer to the edge of the Caño Negro wetlands, an environment similar to famous Tortuguero but much less crowded and much more Costa Rican. You then finish amid the quiet cloud forests of Bajos del Toro.

A bit of everything, in other words.

Most of Costa Rica's iconic wildlife can be seen across the country. Sloths, toucans, howler monkeys, spider monkeys, capuchins, tree frogs, snakes, caiman, coati and morpho butterflies are all fairly common in lowland areas on both the Caribbean and Pacific sides. Hummingbirds are common at higher elevations inland. In theory, you could also see a jaguar pretty much anywhere, but you'd have to be owed an awful lot of karma for that to happen. So we're not putting that in bold...

Monkeys are everywhere and some have rather taken up residence at Rio Perdido. That's except for the little squirrel monkeys that are only found on the southern half of the Pacific coast. You will have a good chance to see them when you visit the Osa Peninsula.

Tapir and anteaters are even less widespread. Anteaters can be seen near your lodge on the Osa Peninsula, but you'd need a huge helping of luck to see a tapir as they tend to prefer to hangout in the adjacent Corcovado National Park.

Humpback whales have two migration windows when they can be seen off the Osa Peninsula. The first coincides with the dry season, particularly from December through February, as the first groups come down from the coast of California. The second arrival is from the south, as pods migrate from Antarctica to give birth between July and October. Dolphins are regularly spotted on boat rides into the Golfo Dulce.

Scarlet macaws are restricted to the southern coast around the Osa Peninsula and Uvita-Dominical, with another stronghold at Carara National Park. You'll certainly see them, and hear their loud squawks and squabbles.

Caño Negro is where many water birds like storks, spoonbills and herons overwinter from North America and so you will see lots of those.

Broadly speaking, Costa Rica has a tropical climate, so it is warm and humid year-round, and every day is likely to feature some rain downpours and some sun. The weather in Costa Rica is often described and defined by the dry season (December - April) and the green season (May - November). Green season is tourist board-speak for wet season.

On the Pacific side of the country, it will typically be sunny, hot and dry from December through April, rainier in the transitional months of May and June, a drier patch in July then wetter in August to a peak in September/October. The driest months have 50mm of rain, the wettest 850mm.

On the Caribbean side, the patterns are very different. Sunshine hours are much more consistent and it's also more consistently wet. The driest month (September) has an average of 150mm of rain where the wettest months (July/December) have 400mm.

As a comparison, London averages around 80mm of rain in the wettest months and 40mm in the driest. The difference is that the rain in Costa Rica is warm. It also tends to rain heavily when it rains - no day long drizzle here. It's either raining, or it's not. The pattern tends to be that rains come later in the day, so dry mornings, wet afternoons.

Overall, we don't sweat the weather too much. It will be what it will be and rarely impacts your travels to a great extent. We advise against travel to the Pacific side in late September through to early November. Otherwise, go prepared and just enjoy whatever comes your way.

Christmas and New Year are peak season for travellers, getting quieter again in January to pick up in February and March, usually through to Easter time. After that point, things are fairly steady. It should be said that the types of places we visit do not tend to get busy. However, the places we stay are small so it doesn't take much to fill them up.

There are private transfers throughout so the price for a single traveller can be high as you have all the fixed costs. However, once at the lodges the excursions are usually in small groups so it is a great trip to have group activities but also your own time to yourself.

Absolutely, this would be a great trip for a group of friends travelling together.

This holiday is primarily conceived of as a journey for lovers of wildlife and the great outdoors who don't want to compromise on their home comforts either. It is about being in the great outdoors, exploring new landscapes and ecosystems and seeing the incredible range of birds, plants and animals which surround you. That does mean that you will be out and about in these different places but the degree of activity tends towards relaxed nature walks.

This trip has a mix of private road transfers and two short internal flights.

Over the course of this trip, you stay in a series of first-class lodges and small hotels.

In Costa Rica, we choose our accommodation very carefully. Premium lodges and hotels, in particular, can quickly become faceless - places where 'luxury' rules the roost to the detriment of personality. On this holiday you stay in a selection of the very finest lodges and hotels, finest in the sense that they are very, very comfortable. They are also in the right places, peacefully and splendidly engaged with their surroundings. Service and hosting are excellent.

Highlights include a luxury inn on a coffee estate, a premium birdwatching lodge and one of Costa Rica's great rainforest retreats.

Less so than is the case on trips where you have your own car and explore more independently. Saying that, the places you are staying are still small scale and staffed by Costa Ricans who are proud to introduce to their country so you will certainly get a great flavour of the country.

Absolutely. We can tailor your trip in any number of ways. If you have specific activities or wildlife events you want to see then we can arrange the trip to include those.

The next step is to simply send an enquiry using the big green button up there, or give us a call if you prefer to chat things through. We will then send you the full proposal for the trip, including the places you stay and all the bright and beautiful photography you can handle.

Suitably seduced, we then tweak things to fit your exact dates and we are happy to go back and forth to tailor any detail so that it's just right for you. We then start to check availability with our local partners and then present a final itinerary for you to book.

We take a 20% deposit to secure your holiday and confirm all services, with the remainder due eight weeks before your departure.

Your money is 100% protected through our ATOL licence if your trip includes a flight booked through us, or through our ABTOT bond if it does not. Either way, this protection provides a cast-iron financial guarantee and helps you book with complete peace of mind. Because the contract between us exists here in the UK, you get this protection regardless of where you live.