The Moon guides are ideal for suggesting affordable accommodations in Central America. Also, they are good for alerting people who care about environmentally sustainable travel to some of the worthwhile eco-tourism opportunities that are best for supporting local efforts to protect the environment.
Costa Rica is probably the easiest (especially if you don’t speak any Spanish), but it is no longer very cheap.
Consider Nicaragua – excellent birding and very affordable. Unfortunately, the place I enjoyed most wasn’t exactly “convenient,” because affordable transport into the mountains requires negotiating a bus station in Managua and another in Estelí. Some people find riding these public busses in the mountains too terrifying, but the two that we were on were in very good condition (much better than some we’ve ridden in Mexico) and reasonably well-driven (much less wild a ride than the taxi we took in Matagalpa).
I would highly recommend birding the Miraflor Nature Reserve in Nicaragua. (
www.miraflor.org ) We spent nearly a week there, and birded for several hours during three of those days in 2 of the 3 ecological zones in the reserve. There are very affordable and clean accommodations throughout the reserve – some a simple, clean room in a home, and others are cabins or bunkhouses. The hosts are warm and friendly, and the area is very safe. Our room and board (3 meals) was about US$15 per day. Local, well-trained birding guides were $20/day. They spoke fairly good English and knew bird i.d.s in English, but best of all – they knew where to find lots of amazing birds.
I hope to write that trip up, since no one has posted anything on Nicaragua on Bird Forum, but I don’t have the time now. So, this is just a reminder to readers to look into birding in Nicaragua – the birding is every bit as good as in Costa Rica and Honduras, but the tourism infrastructure isn’t so developed yet.