I was very lucky to visit friends in Costa Rica when I was a kid. There were virtually no tourists then (and no direct flights from NYC when now there are many per day). When I revisited many years later, it was still super pretty but a totally changed place. For example, signs used to be only in Spanish and now they were in both Spanish and English and there were even some billboards in English only, announcing such things as "Retirement Village: and "Yoga Retreat" and "Surf Colony."