Costa Rica dry season
In the dry season (roughly mid-Nov to April), the weather in Costa Rica is mostly just that: dry all day, with occasional blustery northern winds blowing in during January or February and cooling.
Just starting to plan your trip? Find out how many days are best to spend in Costa Rica depending on your goals.
Best time of year for turtle-spotting
Five species of marine turtle visit Costa Rica’s shores: greens, hawksbills, leatherbacks and olive ridleys, and the strange blunt-nosed loggerhead. The loggerhead seems not to nest in Costa Rica, but can sometimes be seen in Caribbean coastal waters.
Turtle nesting takes place mostly at night, when hundreds of turtles come ashore at a certain time of year. The turtles tend to visit the same beach each time and lay hundreds of thousands of eggs.
The best time of year to visit Costa Rica for turtle-spotting varies, depending on the species. Loggerhead turtles come ashore at Marino Las Baulas National Park on the western Nicoya Peninsula from October to February. Alternatively, you can see them at Tortuguero National Park and Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Reserve from March to May.
A little later in the year, from July to October, green turtles return to their favoured nesting grounds in Tortuguero, with some turtles traveling 2000km to reach their breeding beaches. Hawksbills also come ashore at beaches in Tortuguero, Santa Rosa and Marino Ballena.
Just a few beaches along the Pacific coast, principally Playa Nancite in Santa Rosa and Ostional Wildlife Reserve, olive ridleys storm the sands in their thousands – unusually, often during the day. This event is known as an arribada, and it lasts from July up until November.
