Pauline Frommer's Costa Rica (Pauline Frommer Guides). This item is unavailable.Pauline Frommer's Costa Rica (Pauline Frommer Guides)

A new series of budget travel guides explains how to enjoy an authentic travel experience without spending large amounts of money, offering helpful advice on how to find the best hotel rooms at the most economical rates, the benefits of alternative accommodations, how to find great food without the price tag of fancy restaurants, cool local landmarks and offbeat places to visit, and more.

Currently based in Miami, “Latino by adoption” David Appell is the former editor of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel and Caribbean Travel & Life; co-author of Access Gay USA; and has written for lots of other publications including National Geographic Traveler, Travel+Leisure, The International Herald Tribune, Spain’s El País, GQ, Men’s Fitness, and Out. Dave’s an alum of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and apart from Spanish, gets by in a half-dozen other foreign languages. In fact, these days he’s also the publisher and author of the internationally successful Hot!Spanish and related series of foreign-language phrasebooks devoted to love, dating, and the sundry naughtiness likely to ensue there from (www.HotBabel.com).

Pauline Frommer started traveling before she could speak, seeing the world at a young age with her guidebook writing parents Arthur Frommer and Hope Arthur. She went into the “family biz” over a decade ago, serving first as the editor of Frommers.com and then the travel section of MSNBC.com. Her articles have appeared in numerous publications including Budget Travel, the Dallas Morning News, Marie Claire and the upcoming book The Experts Guide to Babies. In 2006, Pauline Frommer’s New York City won “Best Guidebook of the Year” from the North American Travel Journalism Association. In 1999, she was awarded a Lowell Thomas Medal from the Society of American Travel Writers for her magazine work. She currently appears every Wednesday night on CNN’s Headline News to discuss the latest travel trends. Pauline is married to physical therapist Mahlon Stewart and the mother of two very welltraveled daughters, Beatrix (age 4) and Veronica (age 8).

A former editor at Travel + Leisure, Nelson Mui has written on a variety of topics for publications such as the New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Men’s Journal and San Francisco. A native of Hong Kong who’s lived in Europe and South America, Nelson inherited the travel gene from his mother, an overseas Chinese who grew up in colonial Hanoi, speaks four languages, and packs a bag at the slightest provocation. He finds comfort in the fact that virtually everywhere in the world he’s visited—including the remotest parts of Costa Rica—there’s a Chinese restaurant nearby where he can gather intelligence in his mother tongue.