What local dishes should I try in Costa Rica, and where should I look for them?

Gallo pinto is the fixed point. It is the national breakfast, served in homes, hotels and roadside sodas, and the rice-and-bean base under it reappears at every other meal of the day. Learn it first and the rest of Costa Rican cooking makes sense as variations.

Then the country splits, and the split is cultural rather than merely geographical. Limón, on the Caribbean coast, was settled in large part by Afro-Caribbean workers, and its kitchen uses coconut milk the way the Central Valley uses lard: rice and beans cooked in it, rondón — a slow fish-and-root stew whose name comes from "run down" — and pan bon, a dark spiced bread. None of this appears on a Pacific coast menu. On the Pacific side, ceviche is the default, cured in lime with cilantro and sweet pepper rather than the Peruvian style. In the highlands, olla de carne is the cold-weather dish: beef broth with whole pieces of yuca, chayote, corn and plantain.

Two more things are worth timing. Tamales wrapped in plantain leaf are a Christmas tradition rather than a year-round item, so a December trip gets them and a March trip does not. And coffee is a highland crop here — the growing regions sit in the mountains above the Central Valley and the Pacific slope, not on either coast, so the best cup is usually inland.

Where you eat around protected areas is set by the sites themselves. The Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve, open 7:00 to 16:00 every day of the year including holidays, permits visitors to bring their own food and drink but does not serve or allow alcohol, which makes a packed lunch the sensible plan for a full day there. Arenal Volcano National Park, open 8:00 to 16:00, prohibits bonfires and requires visitors to carry out their own rubbish.

A soda is usually a counter, a handful of plastic tables and a chalkboard listing the day's protein, and the rice goes into the pan before you have sat down. In Limón the smell is different — coconut and allspice rather than onion and annatto — and the bread is sold from unmarked front rooms.

The highland reserves are cold enough to change what you want to eat, and they are the places with the least food available. Monteverde's reserve is a private property of the Centro Científico Tropical, created on 6 October 1972 and covering 4,125 hectares, and the tourism board suggests six to seven hours for a full hiking visit — a stretch of time that has to be provisioned before you arrive, because the reserve's permission to bring your own food is also, practically, an instruction to.

• Breakfast, anywhere — Gallo pinto with egg and tortilla, taken early enough for a 7:00 or 8:00 park opening.
• Lunch on the Caribbean side — Rice and beans cooked in coconut milk, or rondón if a kitchen in Limón is making it that day.
• Dinner in the highlands — Olla de carne, which suits an evening at altitude far better than it suits the coast.

A yellow fever certificate is demanded at immigration from anyone arriving out of certain countries in South America or Africa, and the State Department's crime advice for the country is to exercise increased caution. Leaving by air costs a US$29 departure tax, normally bundled into the ticket. Driving between Limón and the Pacific coast crosses the cordillera, so a day that starts with coconut rice and ends with ceviche is a long day of mountain road. Neither Monteverde's reserve nor Arenal's park has any evening food service available after closing, at 16:00 in both cases.

The trip-planning answer in this group sets out how to sequence the coasts and the highlands; the when-to-visit answer explains the dry season that governs both.