What you can do in Costa Rica
Plenty of people know what they want to do long before they know the name of the place where it happens. This is the site's other door: come in through the experience, come out in the areas where it is.
The landscape
National parks
Costa Rica protects a large share of its territory, and those parks are why many people come. Most charge admission, several require booking days ahead, and some require a guide.
10 areasRainforest
Humid tropical forest: heat, damp air and thirty-metre trees with most of the action happening up in the canopy. It's the landscape most people picture when they think of Costa Rica.
10 areasTropical dry forest
The northern Pacific belt, where the trees drop their leaves in the dry season and the hills turn gold until the rains come back. It's Guanacaste's ecosystem, and one of the most threatened in the tropics.
6 areasSurf beaches
Coasts where the swell shows up most of the year, with waves for people learning and for people who already know. Most are on the Pacific; the Caribbean has its own and they're a different animal.
5 areasMountains
Altitude, cold air and a long view. Not everyone who comes to Costa Rica wants a beach: there are mountain towns where you sleep under a blanket in the middle of the tropics.
4 areasCalm water
Sheltered bays and gulfs where the sea doesn't pound: you can swim, put in a kayak, or let small kids wade in on their own.
3 areasCanals and mangroves
Fresh and brackish water threaded through the forest: canals you travel by boat and mangrove where the trees grow with their roots in the water. You move slowly and you see a lot.
3 areasVolcanoes
The country sits on a line of volcanoes and several can be visited: craters, fumaroles, rivers that come out warm, and cones you can see from town when the sky clears.
3 areasWaterfalls
Mountain rivers dropping off a cliff face. Some have a pool you can get into; most are reached by going down steps or mud, and you have to climb back up.
3 areasCloud forest
Mountain forest sitting inside the cloud: mist drifts between the trees for much of the day and moss covers every branch. It's cool, it drizzles without raining, and it's where the quetzal lives.
2 areasHot springs
Water heated by the volcano, coming out of the ground and channelled into pools. It's what people do at the end of the day, once they've walked enough.
2 areasThings to do
Birdwatching
A small country with an enormous bird list. There are places where the quetzal is the whole reason for the trip and others where macaws fly over the main street.
6 areasDiving and snorkelling
Coral reef on the Caribbean; volcanic rock and open water on the Pacific. They're two different dives: one shallow and colourful, the other about big schools of fish.
3 areasSea turtles
Beaches where sea turtles come ashore to nest. It has a season — each species its own — and it's watched at night, with a guide and without lights.
2 areasWhales and dolphins
Humpback whales pass along the Pacific coast in two separate seasons, and dolphins are around much of the year. You go out by boat, and you go out early.
2 areasZiplines and hanging bridges
Seeing the forest from above: steel cables to cross it fast and hanging bridges to cross it slowly. The bridges ask nothing of your fitness; the cable does ask for a stomach.
2 areasThe kind of trip
Nightlife
Towns where the night keeps going after dinner: street bars, live music and people out late. They aren't most of the country, which is exactly why it helps to know which ones.
3 areasOff the grid
Places no road reaches: you get in by boat or by small plane. It costs more and takes longer, and that is exactly what keeps them the way they are.
2 areasWeekend trips
Places less than two hours from the Central Valley: leave early on Saturday and be back on Sunday without having spent the whole trip driving.
2 areasCity and museums
What the country keeps indoors: museums, a theatre, a market and neighbourhoods you can walk. It's the first and last thing almost every visitor sees, and almost nobody gives it a day.
1 area