Costa Rica: Ten Attractions and Natural Wonders

Small country, outsized nature

Costa Rica is a little smaller than West Virginia but holds an estimated five percent of the world's species. It abolished its army in 1948 and put the money into schools and, later, conservation — roughly a quarter of the country is protected. The result is one of the most developed ecotourism industries anywhere: a compact country where a traveller can be in cloud forest in the morning and on a Pacific beach by evening.

The ten below spread across the volcanic highlands, both coasts, and the southern rainforest. The dry season (roughly December to April) is the peak; the green season is wetter, cheaper, and lush. Roads can be slow and rough.

1. Arenal Volcano and La Fortuna

Arenal was one of the world's most active volcanoes from 1968 to 2010 — a textbook cone that glowed and rumbled nightly — and although it is quiet now, the town of La Fortuna at its foot is Costa Rica's adventure-tourism hub. The volcano is the backdrop for hikes over old lava flows in the national park, hanging bridges, white-water rafting, and a strip of hot-spring resorts fed by the still-warm ground.

The 70-metre La Fortuna Waterfall and Lake Arenal (windsurfing, birdlife) round out the area.

2. Monteverde Cloud Forest

High on the Tilarán range, Monteverde is a dripping, moss-hung cloud forest — epiphytes on every branch, orchids, the resplendent quetzal, and more than 400 bird species. The community was founded by Quaker settlers from Alabama in 1951, and the area is known for canopy zip-lines, hanging bridges, and night walks.

Roads up to the area are only partly paved. The nearby town of Santa Elena is the main base for visitors.

3. Manuel Antonio National Park

On the central Pacific coast, Manuel Antonio is one of Costa Rica's smaller national parks and its most visited: a compact peninsula of rainforest fringed by picture-perfect white-sand coves. Because the animals are used to people, it is one of the easiest places to see three types of monkey, two- and three-toed sloths, agoutis, and coatis, often right beside the trail.

It gets crowded, limits daily visitor numbers, and is closed on Tuesdays. The town of Quepos nearby is the base.

4. Corcovado National Park

On the remote Osa Peninsula in the southwest, Corcovado, Costa Rica's largest park, protects the largest primary forest on the American Pacific coastline — home to all four Costa Rican monkey species, tapir, the country's largest population of scarlet macaws, and jaguar and puma. Visitors hike in or arrive by boat, and since 2014 every visitor must be accompanied by a certified guide.

It is the country's most serious wilderness experience and takes real planning.

5. Tortuguero

On the northern Caribbean coast, Tortuguero is a maze of freshwater canals and lagoons behind a wild black-sand beach, explored by silent boat or kayak — herons, caimans, river otters, three monkey species, and, at night on the beach in season, nesting sea turtles, including green turtles and leatherbacks, along some 35 kilometres of protected coastline.

The area has no road access. It rains a lot here, year-round — up to 6,400 millimetres a year.

6. Poás Volcano

Poás, in the highlands north of the capital, has a huge crater with a steaming, sulphurous acid lake at the bottom — one of the most acidic lakes in the world — viewed from a platform a short walk from the car park. It is one of the most accessible active volcanoes anywhere.

The volcano periodically erupts and the park closes, as it did for long spells in 2017–18 and 2025; when open, visits are by advance reservation, with daily visitor limits, and are kept short because of the gas. The surrounding highlands have coffee farms and cloud forest.

7. Río Celeste

In Tenorio Volcano National Park, in Guanacaste Province, the Río Celeste runs a startling opaque sky-blue. The colour is not dye or minerals dissolving but an optical effect: where two clear streams join, a drop in acidity makes aluminosilicate particles clump to just the right size to scatter blue light (Mie scattering).

A muddy forest trail of about an hour leads from the park entrance to the waterfall, and the river is bordered by hot springs.

8. The Nicoya Peninsula beaches

The Nicoya Peninsula, on the northern Pacific coast, has some of Costa Rica's most famous beaches and a long dry season. The north end (Tamarindo, Playa Flamingo, the surf breaks around Playa Grande, where leatherback turtles nest) is the developed part; the south end (Santa Teresa, Mal País, Montezuma) is the scruffier, surfer-and-wellness scene, reached by long dirt roads or the Puntarenas car ferry.

Nicoya is also one of the world's "Blue Zones", noted for the longevity of its older rural residents.

9. The southern Caribbean coast

The Caribbean coast south of Limón — Cahuita, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Manzanillo — is culturally distinct: with a strong Afro-Caribbean heritage and culture, calypso, coconut-and-spice cooking, and a slower rhythm. Cahuita National Park protects a coral reef about 4 kilometres long, with at least 35 coral species, alongside beaches where sea turtles nest; the beaches range from calm to serious reef-break surf.

Its weather pattern differs from the Pacific side, so its drier spells do not follow the Pacific dry season.

10. Wildlife everywhere

Beyond the headline parks, Costa Rica's appeal is that wildlife is close at hand almost anywhere: sloths in roadside trees, hummingbirds at breakfast, howler monkeys as an alarm clock. The Sarapiquí lowlands, the Osa's Piedras Blancas, the Caño Negro wetlands, the quetzal cloud forests of San Gerardo de Dota, and the turtle beaches of Ostional and Tortuguero each reward a stop.

Offshore, Cocos Island — 550 kilometres out, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997 — is a bucket-list liveaboard dive, famous for its schools of hammerhead sharks.

Costa Rica is easy to travel and rewards a loop: the northern volcanoes and cloud forest, then down one coast for beaches and rainforest. Ten days covers a good slice; two weeks leaves time for the Osa or the Caribbean.