Costa Rica Pictures - Travel Photos

Specialists in Latin America adventure travel, Footloose have been organising small group tours of Costa Rica for many years. Late Booking Discount | Brochure | Costa Rica Discovery | Jewels of Costa Rica

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Click to see 26 pages of Costa Rica Pictures or go below to choose photos of a particular area.

Live and spitting, Costa Rica's finest volcano, Arenal, backdrops the ramshackle town of La Fortuna. Towns in this impoverished Central American country are sadly disorganised and dilapidated, packed with style-free cinder block buildings splashed with eye-busting colours and gaily festooned with sagging cables. But you don't go to there for urban action, do you? We sincerely hope not.
Head for the green, mi amigo. Some sample photos:

Flowers

Wildlife

Volcanoes

Beaches

San Jose

Activities

Travel Information: Costa Rica Travel Guide | Wildlife Parks Information | Costa Rica Tours

Outside its tedious and tacky urban zones this country is a delightful melange of vast, eco-friendly rainforests offering well-organised walks, long or short, buzzing with critters - particularly exotic birds [870 species, so they say, but who's counting?], frogs, butterflies, iguanas, monkeys [200 species of mammal], turtles and varied boggling insects embraced by deep, damp greenery perfectly offset with frequent splashes of floral colour [9,000 species of flowering plants - 1,200 of which are orchids].
Tourist hotels out of town are usually delightful and often efficient too, while local people are friendly and welcoming, except of course, for the ones who go for your wallet with some determination. See Costa Rica Safety.

As far as non-hiking action is concerned there are dozens of high-anxiety rainforest tree-top wire slides, volcanoes to scout, rivers to raft, kayak or tube, golf balls to smack on manicured courses, big and consistent waves to ride off wild beaches or deep sea fishing and scuba diving if your pockets are deep. Alternatively just simmer on the sand of some spacious, wild beaches. Hot springs, mud baths and a cool one are a perfect way to end a sweaty day.

North of the country lies Nicaragua and to the south Panama. Neither domain offers much in the way of interest. It's not difficult to get to CR overland from North America though Texas is 2500 miles north; Peñas Blancas on the west coast is the main border crossing from Nicaragua.
We hope that these pictures will give you an idea of what to do, and perhaps what not to do in Costa Rica. See Bugbog's Travel Guide for fuller information on this little Central American eco-haven.

The best time to visit is from December to May when it's cooler and drier, unless you're a committed surfer in which case the big stuff appears on the Pacific side from April-October. The rest of the year is a variably wet season, though it doesn't usually rain all day, mostly a heavy hour or two in the afternoon.
The coasts - Costa Rica has both Pacific and Caribbean coasts - are pretty much always hot, ranging from the low 20Cs [70F] to high 30Cs [90F+], with high humidity [which is more tiring than the heat]. San José, the capital has a much more comfortable climate due to its altitude of 1100m [3770ft] with temperatures ranging from 15C [60F] to 26C [80F].

Bugbog pictures of some other great countries in the area: