🇨🇷 Costa Rica
San Jose
San José is the capital and largest city of Costa Rica — a city of 340,000 in the metropolitan area (Greater San José has 1.4 million, roughly one-third of Costa Rica's entire population of 5.2 million) situated at 1,170 m altitude in the Central Valley between the Cordillera Central and Cordillera Talamanca mountain ranges. San José is the primary gateway to Costa Rica — the country that has become the global model for ecotourism, conservation and sustainable development: 26% of Costa Rica's territory is protected in national parks and reserves (the highest percentage of protected land of any country in the Americas); the country abolished its military in 1948 (the only country in the Americas to have done so constitutionally); it runs on 99% renewable electricity (mostly hydro and geothermal); and it has the most biodiverse territory per square kilometre of any country on Earth (500,000 species in 51,000 km² — 5% of the world's biodiversity in 0.03% of its land area; including 500,000 species, 1,250 butterfly species, 900 bird species, 220 reptile species and 35,000 insect species). San José itself is a transit city for most visitors — the majority spend 1 night before heading to Arenal (the 1,670 m active volcano with continuous low-level eruption visible from 30 km), Manuel Antonio (beach + rainforest national park on the Pacific coast), the Osa Peninsula (the most biodiverse place on Earth according to National Geographic), Monteverde (the cloud forest reserve founded by Alabama Quakers in 1951), or the Tortuguero canals (the Atlantic coast sea turtle nesting ground). For visitors who spend time in San José, the city has a genuine character — the Barrio Amón colonial architecture, the Central Market, the best coffee in Central America, and the National Museum in a former army barracks.