Costa Rica

Costa Rica — the "Rich Coast" — is a sliver of Central America wedged between Nicaragua and Panama, yet it packs roughly 6 % of the planet's known biodiversity into just 51,100 km². In a single day you can bathe in a Pacific sunset, climb through a cloud forest at 1,800 m, and dip your toes in Caribbean sand on the other coast. Twenty-eight national parks and more than 25 % of protected land make it the world's most successful eco-tourism laboratory.

The country famously abolished its army in 1948, redirecting defence spending toward education and healthcare. The result: literacy above 97 %, life expectancy of nearly 81 years, and a consistent top-ten ranking on the World Happiness Report. Ticos (as Costa Ricans call themselves) greet every question with "Pura Vida" — literally "pure life," but meaning everything from hello and goodbye to "it's all good."

The name Costa Rica — "Rich Coast" — was coined in 1502 when Christopher Columbus landed near present-day Puerto Limón on his fourth voyage and saw indigenous people wearing gold ornaments. The gold turned out to be modest, but the name stuck. Officially the country is the República de Costa Rica.

National symbols include the yigüirro (clay-coloured thrush, national bird, prized for its rain-summoning song), the guaria morada orchid (national flower), the guanacaste tree, and the white-tailed deer. The flag's blue-white-red bands were adopted in 1848, inspired by the French tricolore and the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Costa Rica sits on the Central American isthmus at roughly 10° N, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the south-east, the Caribbean Sea to the east (212 km of coast) and the Pacific Ocean to the west (1,016 km, including the Nicoya and Osa peninsulas). A volcanic spine — the Cordillera de Guanacaste, Tilarán, Central and Talamanca — runs diagonally across the country, with seven active volcanoes including Arenal, Poás, Irazú, Turrialba and Rincón de la Vieja.

The Central Valley (Valle Central), at 1,000–1,500 m, holds San José and more than 60 % of the population, nestled between coffee-draped volcanic slopes. The Caribbean lowlands are hot, wet and culturally Afro-Caribbean; the Nicoya and Guanacaste regions of the north Pacific are drier and famous for their beaches; the Osa Peninsula and Corcovado in the south are the wildest, housing jaguars, tapirs and all four Costa Rican monkey species.

Before Columbus, the territory was a crossroads between Mesoamerican and South American cultures. The Diquís chiefdoms of the south carved the mysterious stone spheres — near-perfect granodiorite orbs up to 2.6 m in diameter — that remain one of archaeology's great puzzles. After Spanish conquest (1561), Costa Rica became the poorest and most isolated corner of the colonial empire: no rich indigenous labour force, no precious metals, and a climate that forced settlers to farm their own land. This accidental equality shaped a culture of small landowners rather than plantation barons.

Independence came peacefully on 15 September 1821, along with the rest of Central America. Coffee, planted in the Central Valley from the 1830s, created the country's first export fortune and funded the National Theater, railways and the port of Limón. Banana plantations on the Caribbean followed. In 1948, a brief civil war ended with President José Figueres Ferrer abolishing the army — a decision confirmed in the 1949 constitution and unique in the Americas. Costa Rica has since been a stable democracy, a sanctuary during Central America's Cold-War conflicts, and host of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Former president Óscar Arias won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace in the region.

Ticos are overwhelmingly mestizo, with smaller but vibrant Afro-Caribbean (largely Jamaican-descended on the Limón coast), indigenous (Bribri, Cabécar, Boruca, Ngäbe, Maleku, Chorotega — about 2.4 % of the population) and Chinese communities. Spanish is the official language; English is widely spoken in tourist regions and Mekatelyu (a Jamaican-Creole-English) lives on in Puerto Viejo.

The national ethos is Pura Vida: avoid conflict, take your time, enjoy your family, trust tomorrow. It is matched by a deep environmental conscience — Costa Rica has reversed deforestation since the 1990s and runs on more than 98 % renewable electricity (hydro, geothermal, wind, solar). Family, Catholicism, football and coffee form the cultural backbone, and Sunday lunch with three generations around a bowl of olla de carne is a sacred rite.

San José (population 340,000 in the city, 2.1 million in the metro) sits at 1,170 m in the Central Valley, surrounded by volcanoes. It is not postcard-pretty at first glance — traffic, concrete, graffiti — but its historic core rewards curiosity: the belle-époque Teatro Nacional (1897, paid for by coffee tariffs and gilded with Italian marble and murals), the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum beneath the Plaza de la Cultura, the Jade Museum's world-class collection, and the leafy Barrio Amón and Barrio Escalante — the latter now the city's food and craft-beer capital.

Do not miss the Mercado Central (1880) for a bowl of olla de carne and a shot of agua dulce, the Sunday concerts in Parque Morazán, and a day trip up to Irazú or Poás volcano for a cratered moonscape at 3,400 m. Eat at Silvestre or Sikwa for contemporary Tico cuisine rooted in indigenous ingredients.

The near-perfect cone of Arenal Volcano (1,670 m) was considered dormant until 29 July 1968, when it exploded and buried three villages. It erupted continuously until 2010 and is now in a quiet phase — but the geothermal heat still powers the region's iconic hot springs (Tabacón, Ecotermales, and free river pools along the Río Chollín). La Fortuna, the gateway town, is a hub for hanging-bridge canopy walks, white-water rafting on the Río Balsa, zip-lining, horseback rides to the 70-metre La Fortuna waterfall, and boat crossings of Lake Arenal to reach Monteverde.

Founded in 1951 by American Quakers fleeing the Korean War draft, Monteverde today protects 10,500 hectares of cloud forest straddling the continental divide at 1,400–1,800 m. Mist swirls between gnarled oak branches draped with bromeliads and orchids; the resplendent quetzal, three-wattled bellbird and hundreds of hummingbirds feed in the canopy. Visit the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, the adjacent Santa Elena and Children's Eternal Rainforest, walk the hanging bridges at Selvatura, and taste the local cheese at the Quaker co-operative's Monteverde Cheese Factory.

Costa Rica's smallest national park (1,983 hectares) is also one of its most beloved: four crescent-shaped white-sand beaches backed by primary rainforest where white-faced capuchin monkeys raid your lunchbox, three-toed sloths hang from almendro trees, and agoutis scurry through the undergrowth. Arrive at opening time to beat the crowds and the heat; walk the Perezoso trail, snorkel off Playa Manuel Antonio, and end the day watching the sunset from El Avión, a restaurant built into a 1954 Fairchild C-123 transport plane.

Reachable only by boat or small plane, Tortuguero National Park on the northern Caribbean coast is Costa Rica's Amazon. A labyrinth of freshwater canals cuts through lowland rainforest alive with caimans, manatees, river otters, howler monkeys and more than 400 bird species. From July to October, green sea turtles nest on the 35 km black-sand beach — the largest rookery in the western hemisphere. Hawksbill, loggerhead and leatherback turtles also use the beach. Guided night-time turtle tours, run by the local conservation programme, are unforgettable and tightly regulated.

Down the Caribbean coast from Limón, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca is where Costa Rica slows down even further. Reggae on the breeze, rice and beans cooked in coconut milk, rasta hand-painted signs, surfers riding the legendary Salsa Brava reef break, and cacao farms in the hills — the culture here is Afro-Caribbean Bribri and Jamaican. Cycle to Playa Cocles, Playa Chiquita and Punta Uva, then continue to the Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge where rainforest meets coral reef.

Tico food is not flashy — it is honest, comforting, fresh, and built around rice, beans, plantains and whatever the rainforest provides. The typical midday meal is a casado ("married man") — a plate of rice, black beans, fried plantain, cabbage salad, a protein (chicken, fish, beef or pork) and sometimes picadillo or a tortilla — served in cheap, cheerful sodas everywhere.

Other must-try dishes: ceviche (Pacific sea bass cured in lime with cilantro and red onion), chifrijo (rice, beans, chicharrón and pico de gallo — a bar snack), arroz con pollo, tamal (Christmas corn dough parcels steamed in banana leaf), patacones (smashed fried green plantains), and tres leches cake.

Costa Rica is not a wine-producing country — the tropical lowlands are too hot and the highlands too wet — but it punches far above its weight in other drinks. Coffee is the national treasure: Arabica grown in the volcanic soils of Tarrazú, Naranjo, Orosi and the Central Valley, all at 1,200–1,900 m. The traditional brewing method is the chorreador, a cloth sock in a wooden stand that produces an intensely aromatic cup. Tour the Doka Estate on Poás, Finca Rosa Blanca or a Tarrazú micro-mill for the full bean-to-cup story.

Guaro Cacique (sugar-cane spirit, 30 % ABV) is the national liquor, produced by the state-owned FANAL since 1850. Drink it as a chiliguaro shot — guaro, tomato juice, lime, Tabasco, salt, pepper — the Costa Rican answer to the Bloody Mary. The craft-beer scene has exploded in the last decade: Costa Rica's Factory, Treintaycinco, Domingo 7 and Numu are the local heroes. Imperial (the lager in the black-eagle can) is the default beach beer.

Costa Rica has two seasons: verano (dry, December–April) and invierno (green, May–November). The Pacific side is reliably dry in verano and sees afternoon downpours in invierno. The Caribbean marches to a different drum — its wettest months are often December and July, driest in September–October. Temperature is governed by altitude, not season: 28–32 °C on the coasts all year, 18–24 °C in San José, 12–18 °C in Monteverde, and near-freezing on top of Chirripó (3,820 m). Best overall time: mid-December to mid-April. Best value: May, June and November — the "green season" with afternoon showers but lush landscapes and fewer tourists.

Two international airports: Juan Santamaría (SJO) in Alajuela, 20 km from San José, with direct flights from Miami, Houston, Newark, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Panama, Bogotá, Madrid, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London and Toronto; and Daniel Oduber (LIR) in Liberia, the gateway to Guanacaste's beach resorts. Overland, the Inter-American Highway connects Nicaragua (via Peñas Blancas) and Panama (via Paso Canoas). Citizens of the EU, UK, US, Canada, Australia and most of Latin America get a 90-day tourist stamp on arrival.

Currency: Costa Rican colón (CRC); USD widely accepted at hotels and tours. Power: 120 V / 60 Hz, US-style plugs. Tap water: generally safe in the Central Valley and major tourist areas, bottled on the coasts. Safety: petty theft is the main concern — do not leave valuables on the beach or in parked cars; violent crime against tourists is rare. Health: no vaccinations required; dengue exists in lowland areas (use repellent). Connectivity: Kolbi, Claro and Movistar sell pre-paid SIMs at the airport for about $15 (20 GB). Tipping: a 10 % service charge is automatically added to restaurant bills; round up taxi fares.

Costa Rica is the most expensive country in Central America — roughly at the level of Portugal or Spain. Budget travellers can survive on $45–60/day (hostel dorm, soda meals, public buses). A comfortable mid-range trip runs $120–180/day (mid-range hotel, car rental, tours, restaurant meals). Luxury eco-lodges like Nayara, Lapa Rios or Pacuare start at $400–800/night. A casado in a soda costs $5–8; an Imperial beer $2–3; a coffee $1.50; a zip-line tour $55–75; a guided national-park walk $40; a 4x4 rental $55–80/day plus insurance.

Costa Rica invented the tropical eco-lodge and still sets the global standard. Top recommendations: Lapa Rios (Osa Peninsula, rainforest luxury), Pacuare Lodge (accessible only by raft), Nayara Tented Camp (Arenal, Relais & Châteaux), Rancho Pacifico (Dominical), Monteverde Lodge, Hotel Grano de Oro (San José, historic). Mid-range: Arenal Observatory Lodge, Si Como No (Manuel Antonio), Selina chain across the country. Budget: Costa Rica Backpackers (San José), Arenal Backpackers Resort, Rocking J's (Puerto Viejo).

Fiestas de Palmares (mid-January) — two weeks of bullfights (non-lethal, Tico-style), carnival rides, concerts and beer. Festival de las Artes (March, San José) — free street theatre, music and dance. Semana Santa (Easter Week) — solemn processions in Cartago and Heredia; the country basically closes. Día de los Boyeros (March, Escazú) — parade of hand-painted oxcarts, a UNESCO-recognised craft tradition. Envision Festival (February, Uvita) — Costa Rica's answer to Burning Man. Fiesta de los Diablitos (late December, Boruca) — indigenous Boruca people re-enact resistance to the Spanish with carved balsa-wood devil masks. Carnaval de Limón (October) — Afro-Caribbean music and parades. Día de la Independencia (15 September) — lantern parades and the torch of independence relay.

Costa Rica has four UNESCO World Heritage Sites:

1. Cocos Island National Park (inscribed 1997, extended 2002) — a remote volcanic island 550 km off the Pacific coast, the only one in the eastern Pacific with a tropical rainforest, and one of the planet's best shark-diving destinations (hammerheads, whale sharks, white-tips). Accessible only by multi-day liveaboard dive boat.

2. Area de Conservación Guanacaste (1999, extended 2004) — a continuous ecological corridor from Pacific dry forest up through cloud forest and down to the Caribbean, protecting a remarkable spectrum of habitats and species.

3. Talamanca Range-La Amistad Reserves / La Amistad National Park (1983, shared with Panama) — the largest protected area in Central America, sheltering cloud forests, páramo and an unbroken record of tropical flora on volcanic and metamorphic rock.

4. Precolumbian Chiefdom Settlements with Stone Spheres of the Diquís (2014) — four archaeological sites in the Diquís delta of the southern Pacific, featuring the mysterious near-perfect stone spheres (some over 2 m in diameter) made by the Diquís culture between 500 and 1500 CE.

Río Celeste (Tenorio National Park) — a waterfall and river turned impossibly turquoise by suspended aluminosilicate minerals. Corcovado National Park (Osa Peninsula) — the wildest place in Central America; National Geographic called it "the most biologically intense place on Earth." Chirripó (3,820 m) — Costa Rica's highest peak, with a two-day hike through páramo to watch the sunrise above both oceans. Drake Bay — jumping-off point for Caño Island snorkelling and Corcovado. Bajos del Toro — hidden waterfalls inside a volcanic crater, off the gringo trail. Rancho Humo (Palo Verde) — boat safaris on the Tempisque river, full of crocodiles, jabirus and howler monkeys. Finca Exótica — permaculture lodge at the end of a dirt track on the Osa, farm-to-table and solar-only.

Lightweight quick-dry clothes, a proper rain jacket (it rains even in the dry season), hiking shoes with grippy soles, water shoes/sandals, insect repellent with DEET or picaridin, reef-safe sunscreen, a dry bag, a small torch for night walks, binoculars (a must for wildlife), a universal adapter (US-type plugs, but you probably already have USB-C), a swimsuit, a sarong, and a copy of The Birds of Costa Rica by Garrigues & Dean. Skip jeans — they take forever to dry.

Official tourism board: visitcostarica.com. National parks and reservations: sinac.go.cr. Weather: imn.ac.cr. Real-time road conditions: Waze. Bus times: thebusschedule.com/cr. The excellent English-language newspaper: ticotimes.net. Community forum: costarica.com.

The Ticos: Culture and Social Change in Costa Rica by Mavis, Richard & Karen Biesanz — the classic anthropological portrait. Costa Rica: A Traveler's Literary Companion edited by Barbara Ras. Green Phoenix: Restoring the Tropical Forests of Guanacaste, Costa Rica by William Allen. The Monkey's Bridge by David Rains Wallace — natural history of Central America. Around the Edge by Peter Ford — walking the Caribbean coast. For birders, Garrigues & Dean's The Birds of Costa Rica. For fiction, Fernando Contreras Castro's Única Looking at the Sea.

Search YouTube for: "Costa Rica 4K Wildlife" by BBC Earth, "Costa Rica — The Happiest Country in the World" by DW Documentary, "Life in the Cloud Forest" by Nat Geo, "Corcovado — Most Intense Place on Earth", the "Costa Rica Travel Guide" series by Samuel and Audrey, and "Monteverde Cloud Forest" by Travel with Kait. The Tico Times YouTube channel carries excellent news and cultural shorts.

Costa Rica has no army — abolished in 1948 by Figueres, who smashed a wall of the Cuartel Bellavista with a sledgehammer. The country generates more than 98 % of its electricity from renewables and has gone multiple years running entirely on clean energy. It hosts 6 % of global biodiversity on 0.03 % of Earth's land. The Nicoya Peninsula is one of the world's five "Blue Zones" — places where people routinely live past 100. Costa Rica has more species of butterflies than the whole of Africa. Coffee exports were once so vital that export tariffs built the National Theater. The country's constitution makes education compulsory and free through high school and guarantees universal healthcare. The famous pura vida greeting came from a 1956 Mexican comedy film that became a cult hit in Costa Rica.

Óscar Arias Sánchez — president 1986–1990 & 2006–2010, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for the Esquipulas II accords that ended Central America's civil wars. José Figueres Ferrer ("Don Pepe") — three-time president, abolished the army, founder of the modern welfare state. Claudia Poll — Olympic swimming gold medallist (Atlanta 1996, 200 m freestyle). Keylor Navas — goalkeeper, three-time UEFA Champions League winner with Real Madrid, captain of the national team. Carlos Alvarado Quesada — former president, decarbonisation champion. Franklin Chang-Díaz — NASA astronaut, seven shuttle missions, now developing plasma rockets. Chavela Vargas — born in San Joaquín, the legendary ranchera singer (naturalised Mexican). Debi Nova — Latin Grammy-winning singer-songwriter.

Football is the national obsession. The men's national team — La Sele — famously reached the quarter-finals of the 2014 World Cup, undefeated in regulation, before falling to the Netherlands on penalties. Liga FPD is the top domestic league, with historic clásicos between Saprissa ("El Monstruo Morado") and LDA Alajuelense. Surfing is huge: Playa Pavones has one of the world's longest left-hand waves, and Santa Teresa, Tamarindo and Nosara are international surf hubs. Other passions: white-water kayaking on the Pacuare, mountain biking, sport fishing (the Osa is Pacific sailfish capital), and long-distance running (the Chirripó ultra and La Ruta de los Conquistadores MTB race).

Costa Rica consistently ranks among the top countries in Latin America for press freedom — 10th worldwide in Reporters Without Borders' 2025 index, ahead of Germany and Belgium. The main daily newspapers are La Nación, La República and Diario Extra; online outlets Semanario Universidad and CRHoy do strong investigative work. English-language: The Tico Times (founded 1956, now online-only) and Q Costa Rica. Television is dominated by Teletica, Repretel and Canal 7. Radio Monumental and Radio Columbia are the most listened-to news stations. The 1946 constitution enshrines freedom of expression and prohibits media censorship.

My first morning in Costa Rica I woke up at a tiny lodge outside La Fortuna to a sound I could not place — something between a jet engine starting up, a distant lion, and an asthmatic old man. I stepped barefoot onto the wooden balcony and there, in a guarumo tree five metres away, sat a howler monkey silhouetted against a pink sky, roaring the sun up over Arenal. I had been half-awake from the flight and suddenly I was fully, stupidly awake, and I laughed out loud because I understood pura vida in a way no guidebook had managed to explain.

Ten days later I was floating down the Tortuguero canals at dawn, the guide cutting the outboard so we could listen to the caimans exhale, watching a sloth move across a cecropia leaf with theological patience. I ate gallo pinto for breakfast every morning, learned to pour Lizano on everything, wore out a pair of hiking boots on the stone spheres trail in the Diquís delta, and got badly beaten by the Salsa Brava reef in Puerto Viejo. I drank too much Imperial on the beach at Playa Chiquita and not enough coffee at a Tarrazú micro-mill where the owner explained, seriously, that the best beans are picked with the left hand because "the heart is closer." I have no idea if that is true. I chose to believe it.

Costa Rica is not the cheap paradise it was twenty years ago — prices bite, the Pacific coast is being built over, and the monkeys in Manuel Antonio have learned to unzip rucksacks. But the country still does something very rare: it makes you feel that the future might turn out OK. A nation that abolished its army, replanted its forests, runs on hydro and still takes a two-hour lunch break — that is a quiet, stubborn kind of hope, and I found myself borrowing a bit of it to bring home.

—Radim Kaufmann, 2026