Outdoor Books

Surf guides, trail guides and river books:

the useful split is by what you will be doing with the book in your hands. Surf guides map breaks, tides and access roads beach by beach; Mike Parise’s Surfer’s Guide to Costa Rica began as a self-published booklet and became a classic for surfers working their way through Central America, from Nosara to Santa Teresa and beyond. Park and trail guides describe routes such as the climb to Chirripó from San Gerardo de Rivas, and river guides grade the rapids on rivers like the Pacuare and the Reventazón. Manuals on camping, knots, map reading and first aid in the field work anywhere. Field guides to birds and frogs have their own place in animal books, and a collection of camp-stove recipes sits better with cookbooks.

Maps and atlases for Costa Rica’s mountains:

a guidebook tells you where a trail goes, and a topographic sheet shows how much it climbs. The Instituto Geográfico Nacional’s 1:50,000 sheets cover the whole country and are the standard for anyone planning routes in the Talamanca range, though at that scale the contours can hide a short cliff, so ask locally as well. Wilberth Herrera’s bilingual Mapa-Guía de la Naturaleza pairs the national map series with a description of each protected area, and it is an older title that is easier to find used than new. Sheet maps that have been folded and refolded wear through along the creases, so hold the folds up to the light before you pay.

Guidebook editions and the out-of-print classics:

age matters differently depending on what the book is for. Route descriptions, river grades and natural history change slowly, so an old trail or paddling guide stays useful for years. The practical pages do not: access arrangements, bookings, contacts and places to stay go out of date within a couple of editions and need checking before a trip. That is also the honest price story. A recent English-language travel guide resells for a fair part of what it cost, one several editions old is worth very little, and out-of-print specialist titles such as Joseph Franke’s guide to the national parks or Michael Mayfield’s river guide only turn up used and are worth whatever they are worth to the person hunting for them.

A trail guide that has been in a backpack:

shows it in ways worth checking page by page. Rain and river spray leave pages wavy and stuck together, and a book that dried shut often tears when it is opened. Fold-out maps and the map pocket inside the back cover go missing, and some owners cut out the pages for one region to save weight, so count the maps against the contents list. Notes in the margins matter less here than in a novel: a previous owner’s marked spring or a crossed-out closed trail can be useful, as long as it is in pencil and readable. Spiral-bound and waterproof-paper editions survive damp far better than glued paperbacks.

Guidebooks and maps from a finished trip:

sell best with the details a buyer cannot see in a thumbnail. Give the title, author, edition and language, since English and Spanish copies of the same guide reach different buyers. Photograph the cover, the copyright page and any fold-out maps opened flat, and say if a map is missing or a section has been cut out. Travellers leaving the country often have a guide, a set of maps and a camping manual to clear in their last week, and the bundle goes faster than single books. A buyer collecting one in Puerto Viejo or Pérez Zeledón should open the maps and check the edition before handing over any money.