Costa Rica

For the nature enthusiast, Costa Rica stands apart. Here’s a country that has placed conservation and ecotourism at the top of its priority list, and has consequently become one of the most popular travel destinations in the Western Hemisphere. Want a one-stop-shop primer in tropical ecology? You won’t regret Costa Rica.

Jammed between Nicaragua and Panama, Costa Rica’s not a big country by any means. Its topographic and ecological diversity, however, would be notable even without a top-class network of national parks and preserves. The beaches, mangroves, and maritime jungles of the Pacific and Caribbean coasts rise to belts of high mountains along the Continental Divide; dry savannas give way to deep lowland rainforest, the epiphyte-festooned cloud forest of the highlands grades into alpine barrens. Trek your way through multiple vegetation belts to the craggy summit of Cerro Chirripó—the 12,530-foot roof of Costa Rica—and, if conditions are clear, you can survey both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean for some unforgettable perspective of Central American geography.

Nearly 5 percent of the world’s species call Costa Rica home, and appreciating that outstanding biodiversity is central to most visitors’ itineraries. The ecologies of North and South America bleed together here: Songbirds and raptors that summer in the U.S. and Canada find winter refuge in these Neotropical rainforests, and northern mammals such as coyotes and white-tailed deer mingle with jaguars, tapirs, sloths, and capuchin monkeys. To protect those treasures, a quarter of the country now lies within national parks and preserves. Down on the Osa Peninsula, Corcovado National Park (Costa Rica’s biggest) is almost indescribably diverse, spanning mangrove coast and upper-elevation cloud forest and supporting everything from orcas, humpback whales, and leatherback turtles to American crocodiles, spider monkeys, and giant anteaters. Other notable sanctuaries include the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, the rugged coastal complex of Manuel Antonio National Park, and the volcanic heights of Poás Volcano National Park. You’ll likely begin and end many a day at a rainforest eco-resort to the ear-splitting chorus of howler monkeys, a quintessential Costa Rican soundtrack.

Some ethereally beautiful coastline—better than 750 miles of it, in fact—defines both the western and eastern margins of Costa Rica. You’ll find truly lovely beaches here, from the well-developed (such as Montezuma and Tamarindo) to the deliciously isolated (like Santa Rosa National Park). Surfers covet the Pacific breakers, while divers speak in hushed tones of the dreamlike waters of secluded Cocos Island.

All this life-packed wilderness might overshadow Costa Rican culture, but you’re still liable to be charmed by it. Here in the “Switzerland of Central America,” the society is stable, progressive, and as tourist-friendly as any you’ll find.

Costa Rica is one of those places you really have to see to believe. More than just a crown jewel of Mesoamerican ecology, it's a place—like Brazil, like Tanzania, like Alaska—to meditate more broadly on the beautiful complexity and raw energy of Nature, and to consider your own place, as a human animal, in the big scheme of things.