Quality comes with a price ?

My first impression of Costa Rica begins with a friendly local at the airport helping me out to find my sleeping bag and a backpack of an American guy, George at the luggage pick up. After 20 minutes of waiting I suddenly realize that I had my sleeping bag as hand baggage before switching planes in Panama City and that I never took it out... I won't need it for the first three months anyway...
My second impression was that Costa Rica is very clean, especially after getting used to the rubbish everywhere in the Dominican Republic. I share a taxi with George to a backpackers named "Costa Rica Backpackers". A very big hostel in the middle of San Jose with a swimming pool, a restaurant, lots of hammocks and free internet. The backpackers houses a lot of nice people and the staff is very friendly, helpful and multilingual (no Flemish though), but the kitchen lacks pots and pans, spoons, bowls, forks. It appears to me there way of promoting the kitchen.
The next day we decide to get out of San Jose and head north before we (or maybe just I) will head south. After a 4,5 hour bus trip we arrive in Pension Sante Elena in Monte Verde which is a fair big city considering the difficulties involved getting here. It resembles a bit like a skiing village and since the bus is full of tourists (probably because this place is in the Lonely Planet and I seem to be the only one who doesn't follow his guidelines) we have to hurry to get a bed in this hotel.
The price all this comes with, seems to be an identity-loss and a culture that's hard to spot.