Steaming volcanoes, mist-shrouded cloud forest, beautiful beaches and some of the most spectacular wildlife on earth all awaits on a bucket list adventure to Costa Rica. But when is the best time to visit this incredible country?

With 12 distinct climactic zones and seasonal variations on the best time to see things like sea turtles or whales whilst in Costa Rica, we thought it would be useful to get some information from the very best source.

Roberto is our local host in Costa Rica, an expert on all things weather and wildlife in the country and passionate about showing guests the very best of his home country – and trust us when we say that’s a lot.

We caught up with Roberto, to quiz him on the very best times to visit Costa Rica on a wildlife or adventure holiday.

“So the first thing to consider is that Costa Rica is a tropical country, and like most tropical areas in the world, we have two seasons – a dry season and a rainy season.

However, Costa Rica is a bit different because it is very narrow and it has the Pacific side and then it has the Atlantic side, there is a central valley and high mountains that divide the country in two.

Because of all this, the weather on the Atlantic or Caribbean side is very different to the weather on the Pacific side.

The Pacific side and the central valley behave mostly the same, and then the Caribbean with the northern plains gets their own weather.

When are the Wet and Dry Seasons in Costa Rica?

So we have two main seasons, and then two areas that are different weather-wise.

So, everybody says, if you go on the internet or the official tourist board, the dry season goes from December through to March or the start of April. The transition from the rainy to the dry season happens in November and early December, and then the transition of the dry season to the rainy season happens in April.

So in May you would be there in the rainy season and in October you would also be. The rainiest time in the rainy season are the months of September and October, May and June are also very rainy and then in July we kind of get a small break, it’s kind of like a small dry season embedded there.

That’s a simple explanation, but many people forget about what I said before about the weather on the Caribbean side.

So many people want to come and go to Tortuguero or to the north or south Caribbean. They’ll go in January and it will be pouring down with rain because it’s very different.

So what happens over there is that the dry season is very unpredictable, in fact the whole Caribbean area is very unpredictable so there is no best time to visit this side of Costa Rica.

As a side note, I love to do scuba diving, and there is some good scuba diving in that area. I tried to plan some trips and of the three I tried, four were a failure.

Because you obviously need to plan the trip, so I would organise everything, everything would be ready and then literally the day before the diving company would ring and say “don’t even bother coming, there is swell, you’ll have no visibility in the water”, so it’s very unpredictable.

But the one thing that can be predicted is that the driest months on the Caribbean side are September and October. So here in Santa Maria, the central valley and even down on the south Pacific, whilst it’s raining and raining and raining it will be sunny up in the Caribbean.

So that’s one thing to bear in mind, some people will say while it’s raining in the Pacific it will always be sunny in the Caribbean, that’s not always the case. For example earlier this year I was in the Caribbean for three consecutive weekends, and I had very, very nice weather while it was raining a lot here, and then on the last day it was raining.

If you speak to the locals you will hear “yeah, in May, June you may get the odd good day” but what’s really predictable is that September and October are dry.

So that’s a good thing to keep in mind, because if we have itineraries that go there, the best time to promote them is now so that they go in September or October, and it’s even better because it’s low season. It’s up there with the best time to visit Costa Rica.