12 reasons that help Costa Rica to be so darn cool!

April & I have been big fans of Costa Rica for a while now. Which by the way means "Rich Coast" in Spanish, which I embarrassingly didn't put together for way too long. Anyhow, we've spent a lot of our time reading blogs and tweets about the country but we've noticed that there is A LOT of noise out there on the web, particularly folks duping content and trying to sell advertising on their site...so we put together some of our favorite fun facts about the country below for you. Hope you enjoy!

1. Even through Costa Rica is just slightly smaller than the state of West Virginia, there are still over 800 miles of gorgeous coastline. 
2. By plane, it's less than 3.5 hours from Atlanta to Liberia international and just around 4 hrs to the capital city of San Jose. 
3. The country is committed to maintaining its green qualities. Over 1/4th of Costa Rica’s total landmass is dedicated to reserves, wildlife refuges, & national parks. This makes for fantastic hiking, biking, and sightseeing.
4. I've read a lot of varying reports on "average temperature"...and although it does depend greatly on altitude, the year-round range seems to be in the range of absolutely perfect, 70 to 90 degrees F. And they don't have hurricanes. For real. 
5. It's a democracy, yeah! It's actually the oldest democracy in Latin America. And they have a woman president...progressive!
6. An estimated 95% of the population participates in election voting. We Americans average around the 60% mark. Shame on us...
7. The country claims five percent of the earth's total species making it one of the richest ecosystems anywhere. 
8. It boasts one of the world's highest life expectancy rates at 78.9 years (and climbing). The US is estimated to be 78.4. Not a huge difference, but definitely a surprise to me.
9. No Army! They abolished it in 1949 and decided to instead invest in public resources & education as well as infrastructural improvements to benefit their people. Can you imagine that?
10. THE VOLCANOS!
11. Costa Rica always ranks top of lists for the world's best surfing, sports-fishing, dive spots and great mountain hiking. No surprise there; thats the reason we love it so much!
12. Costa Rica is the happiest country in the world...so says the Happy Planet Index (HPI) which takes into account how people rank themselves in life satisfaction, as well as other factors like life expectancy and ecological footprint. I believe them.

What else have you heard about Costa Rica?