Battersea Power Station said:
Oh, no, I didn't mean the country itself is "too resorty" -- just the itinerary that I booked. Where did you stay? Any tips and/or interesting local things to check out?
We're staying 3 or 4 days near the volcano (Arenal) and 3 or 4 days at Flamingo Beach. But, like I said, I'll have a car and am looking to spend at least 1 day away from other vacationers.
We stayed further south, around Manuel Antonio and Jaco Beach, it's probably not worth going down there for a day, it's probably a 4 hour drive from where you're staying. We went zip-lining, rafting, surfing (Jaco area is known for it), a couple of rain forests (the one at Manuel Antonio had a great beach, lizards running on the sand, monkeys swinging from tree to tree, all while you swam).
Took a trip to Tortuga island, also went fishing on the way there (we rented a ~25' boat for around $600), caught a ~6-7 foot sail fish which we released. The island was a bit overrated, but the fishing experience (everything we caught was cleaned and cooked on the beach), and the big storm that smacked us into us during our return was quite an experience.
We also went on a 3 hour ATV tour by Jaco, they took us through some incredibly rough terrain, really narrow passings, one mistake and you were off the side of a mountain. The views were incredible, really a site to see.
The only negative, which isn't really a negative, is that the sun is down by 6pm, so plan everything with that in mind (one of the Parks we visited closed at 4pm for example). Whatever you do, I'm sure you'll have fun.