Most Costa Rica planning advice is built around the weather: dry season, green season, the months in between. Two stretches of the year are shaped just as much by the calendar. Over Christmas and New Year, and again during Holy Week (Semana Santa), a large part of the country takes time off and heads for the same beaches that visitors want to see. Hotels fill, the roads to the coast clog, some services close and prices move. If you are thinking about Christmas in Costa Rica, or about travelling at Easter, none of this is a reason to stay away. It simply changes the order in which you should plan.

Why these weeks are different

Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Holy Thursday and Good Friday are all national holidays in Costa Rica. Schools are on break too: in 2026, for example, the Ministry of Education calendar set Holy Week as a full school break and ended the school year on 9 December. Families who would normally be at work or in class are free to travel, and most of them head for the coast.

That domestic rush lands on top of the international high season, which already runs through the dry months. It is the combination, not either factor on its own, that makes these dates feel different from an ordinary week in January or February.

Christmas and New Year in Costa Rica

How the season builds. Early December is usually calmer, with quieter beaches and ordinary rates at many hotels. Crowds build through the middle of the month, and the days between Christmas and New Year are the busiest of the whole season. Things typically settle back to normal high-season levels in the first days of January. If your dates have any flexibility, that shape matters more than any single tip in this article.

Where the weather is best. By December the Pacific side is moving into the dry season: Guanacaste is mostly dry, and the Central and South Pacific are drying out as the month goes on. The Caribbean coast and the Arenal area are different. December is still a wet month there, and Arenal can be cooler and cloudier. Neither is ruled out, but if clear skies matter to you, the Pacific is the safer base for these dates. Our month-by-month guide to visiting Costa Rica goes into each region.

Christmas in Costa Rica: closures, roads and parks

What closes, and what does not. Banks and government offices close on 25 December and 1 January, but hotels, tours and restaurants in tourist areas generally keep working. The days to watch are 24 and 31 December, when supermarkets and smaller businesses can close early. Avoid arriving late in the day with no dinner plan: arrange the first night’s meal in advance, or eat at your hotel.

Roads and transfers. Holiday traffic towards the beaches is heavy, and a drive that takes a few hours on an ordinary day can stretch well beyond that. Put the longest transfers on the quieter days, leave early, and never combine a long transfer with a big activity on the same day. A private transfer will not make the traffic disappear, but a local driver knows when to leave and which route to take, and our guide to private transfers or a rental car explains when each makes sense.

Parks and activities. Popular national parks such as Manuel Antonio limit the number of daily visitors, so entry tickets and good time slots are worth securing ahead of time. Guided tours and transfers fill up in holiday weeks as well.

Holy Week (Semana Santa)

When it falls. Holy Week moves with Easter. In 2027, Holy Thursday is 25 March and Good Friday is 26 March, with Easter Sunday on 28 March. Both days are national holidays, and schools are usually on break for the whole week.

The beach exodus. This is the week when Costa Ricans head to Jacó, Manuel Antonio, Tamarindo, Playas del Coco and similar towns, often in large family groups, while San José becomes unusually quiet. The roads are at their worst on the Wednesday afternoon and Thursday before Good Friday, and again on the Sunday-evening return. Public buses run reduced schedules on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, banks are closed and many shops shut.

The quieter side of the country. The highlands and inland areas, such as La Fortuna and Arenal, Monteverde and San Gerardo de Dota, are less affected by the beach crowds, and so is Tortuguero. Holy Week falls inside the dry season, so the Pacific side is generally sunny. A route that keeps the beach days for earlier in the week, or for the week after, and puts the inland stops across the holiday itself is often the most relaxed way to handle it.

Alcohol and processions. Some municipalities restrict alcohol sales on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. The rules are set locally and vary, and the popular beach towns are generally unaffected, but if you are staying somewhere small, ask your hotel. The processions held in cities such as San José, Cartago and Alajuela are solemn religious events rather than festivals, so ask before photographing people.

Three ways to approach a peak date

Travel through the peak, and plan it early. If the holiday is the reason you are travelling, that is entirely workable. Settle your dates first, then the hotels, then the transfers, then the activities. In peak weeks the places you most want to stay are usually the first thing to tighten, so they end up deciding the route.

Move your dates a little. Arriving in the first week of December, or travelling after the first days of January, often puts you in the same dry season with fewer people and more ordinary pricing. Even a few days can change what the trip feels like.

Choose places the rush does not reach. Use the inland and highland regions for the busiest days and keep the beaches for the days on either side. This works at Christmas as well as at Easter.

Families, couples and cancellation terms

Holiday weeks coincide with school breaks, so these are popular dates for family trips. Our usual rule applies with extra force: one substantial activity a day is normally enough, and transfer days should stay light. Our Costa Rica family vacations page shows how we build them. Couples marking a special occasion, or planning a honeymoon around the holidays, can look at our Costa Rica honeymoon ideas and should book the most sought-after hotels early. Finally, cancellation terms can be stricter over holiday dates than at other times of year, so check them before you pay for anything non-refundable.

Quick answers

Is everything closed on Christmas Day? No. Banks and government offices are closed, but hotels and most tourist services keep running. Plan around the early closings on 24 and 31 December.

When is Holy Week in 2027? Holy Thursday is 25 March, Good Friday is 26 March and Easter Sunday is 28 March.

Should I avoid these weeks altogether? Not necessarily. If you can only travel then, a well-planned route handles the crowds. If your dates are flexible, a few days either side often means a calmer trip.

Plan Christmas or Holy Week in Costa Rica with a local specialist

The right plan depends on who is travelling, when you can leave and what matters most to you. Tell us your dates, your interests and your pace, and a specialist in our San José team will explain what that week looks like in the places you are considering and how to route around the busiest days. You can plan your Costa Rica trip with us, or talk to a local expert first.

Osa is the part of Costa Rica most travellers never reach. There is a reason for that. It is far, the roads are bad and you have to plan ahead. But those who do go see something you no longer find in the rest of the country: lowland rainforest that was never logged, running unbroken all the way down to the sea.

National Geographic once called Corcovado the most biologically intense place on Earth. That quote gets repeated everywhere by now, by us as well, but it does hold up. On an area of just over four hundred square kilometres live roughly half of all the species found in Costa Rica.

Why Corcovado is different

Costa Rica has a great deal of protected land, but most of it is mountain forest, cloud forest or volcano slope. Tropical lowland rainforest on the Pacific side has disappeared almost everywhere, in Central America and beyond. On Osa it is still standing. Over four hundred square kilometres of it, unbroken, with a coastline attached.

That unbroken part is the point. Large animals need room. A jaguar holds a territory of tens of square kilometres. In a fragmented forest those species do not survive. Here they still do, just.

The peninsula was remote for so long that it was spared. Logging and gold prospectors only arrived in the seventies, and neither has ever entirely left. The park was established in 1975, partly to stop exactly that. Go out with an older guide and you will hear stories about it that appear in no guidebook.

What lives there

Four monkey species: howler, capuchin, spider monkey and the squirrel monkey. That last one is barely seen anywhere else. Tapirs, which with some luck you meet at a mud wallow. All six of Costa Rica’s cat species, jaguar included, though almost nobody sees one.

What you will certainly hear are the scarlet macaws. They fly over in pairs and sound like a rusty gate swinging. Osa has the largest population in the country.

Beyond that, hundreds of bird species, armadillos, coatis, sloths and more snakes than you want to know about. Along the coast there are beaches where sea turtles come up to lay, and in the river mouths there are crocodiles and bull sharks. So you do not simply swim anywhere here. Always ask first.

Do not expect a zoo. You walk for hours and sometimes see little. Then you stop dead because a tapir steps out of the undergrowth five metres away. That is precisely why people come back.

You cannot simply walk in

Corcovado is one of the few parks in Costa Rica where a certified guide is compulsory. You cannot set off on the trail by yourself. The number of visitors per day is capped as well. That feels strict, and in high season it makes planning awkward, but it works. You are not walking in a queue of day trippers.

And honestly: a guide sees ten times more than you do. Where you see a branch, he points out a snake.

Book well ahead. For December to April places are sometimes gone months in advance. Arranging this two weeks beforehand will not get you in. This is not a park you drive past on a whim.

A good guide makes all the difference here. Most are from the area, have known the forest since childhood and carry a scope that they have trained on a sloth or an owl before you have worked out where they are looking. Ask for a guide who knows birds if that matters to you; they are not all specialised in the same thing.

Getting there

There are three ways, and which one you choose depends on how much time you have.

Flying to Puerto Jimenez or Drake Bay takes about an hour from San Jose. Small aircraft, little luggage, but you are there the same morning. Driving is possible too: eight hours from San Jose to Puerto Jimenez, on tarmac that becomes steadily less tarmac towards the end. For Drake Bay the last stretch goes by boat from Sierpe, straight through the mangroves. That boat ride is worth doing in its own right.

From Puerto Jimenez you drive to the La Leona or Los Patos entrance. From Drake Bay you sail to San Pedrillo or Sirena. Sirena sits in the middle of the park and offers the best chance of large animals, but you have to sleep there or make a long day trip of it.

Costs vary a lot. Park entry and the compulsory guide together come to around a hundred dollars per person per day, before boats and transport. Osa is not the cheapest part of Costa Rica and it is better to know that in advance.

Where to stay

Inside the park there is only La Sirena, a basic station with bunk beds or tents and simple meals. No luxury, but it is the one place where you are outside at sunrise while everybody else still has to sail in. For anyone who wants to see animals, that is the difference.

Outside the park there is more choice. Puerto Jimenez is a real town with shops and restaurants. Drake Bay is smaller and quieter. And along the coast there are lodges running on solar power, where you eat by lamplight and the wifi half works. Some guests find that annoying. Most are glad of it after two days.

The four entrances differ considerably. La Leona you reach on foot along the beach from Carate, which is not always possible at high tide. Los Patos is inland and is the hardest walk. San Pedrillo is easiest from Drake Bay and has a waterfall within walking distance. Sirena is the finest, and also the most expensive and the hardest to book. Anyone with only one day usually does San Pedrillo; anyone who wants animals goes to Sirena.

Beyond the park

Osa is more than Corcovado alone, and that is often forgotten.

Cano Island lies an hour offshore and has the clearest water on this coastline. Snorkelling and diving there are excellent. The Golfo Dulce on the other side of the peninsula is one of the few tropical fjords in the world, deep and sheltered, where humpback whales come to calve from July to October and again from December to March. From both hemispheres, which happens nowhere else.

And then there is the night walk. By day the forest is quiet and you mostly see leaves. Once it is dark that changes completely: frogs, spiders, snakes, insects you did not know existed. For many travellers it turns out to have been the best part.

Book your lodge early as well. There are few of them, and once the good places are full there is not much left. That goes double for Drake Bay, where the rooms seem countable on one hand.

When to go, and for how long

The dry season runs from December to April. Trails are easier, boat trips run more often, and it is busy. In September and October it rains harder here than anywhere else in the country, sometimes a few hundred millimetres in a week. Some lodges simply close.

May, June and November sit in between. Green, far fewer people, and the rain usually holds off until the afternoon. We often think that is the best window, though not everyone says so out loud.

Count on three nights minimum. Spending two days travelling there and back for one day on the ground is a waste of the effort. Four or five nights is more comfortable and leaves room for Cano Island or the gulf.

Worth adding: the mangroves at Sierpe themselves. Most people pass through them in twenty minutes on the way to Drake Bay while looking at their phone. Book a separate trip and you will see ibises, tree snakes and with luck a silky anteater.

What to bring

Shoes that can take mud and that you are willing to get wet. Long trousers, long sleeves, insect repellent. A rain jacket, dry season included. Binoculars, because without them you miss half of it. And a dry bag for your phone and camera, certainly if you arrive by boat: coming ashore means standing in the surf.

Bring cash. There are hardly any cash machines and not everything takes cards. And expect no signal in the park.

One last thing: do not leave the binoculars in the safe because they are heavy. Everyone who does regrets it later.

Children can come along, but not everywhere. The long day trips to Sirena are too much for young children; a shorter walk at San Pedrillo, a boat trip and a night walk work very well indeed. From about eight years old it gets easier.

If you are unsteady on your feet, you do not have to write Osa off. There are lodges with short, level paths on their own grounds where you see toucans and monkeys from your terrace. You skip the park itself and still get the feeling.

Who is this for?

Anyone happy to set off in the morning with wet shoes and not bothered by insects will get everything out of this. Anyone who mainly wants to swim, rest and eat well is better off elsewhere. Manuel Antonio gives you monkeys too, but with a beach bar next to them.

Osa also combines well with a few quiet days afterwards. Many travellers fly on to Manuel Antonio or to the Golfo Dulce for something calmer.

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Most people book Costa Rica for the volcanoes and the rainforest. Food rarely makes the brochure. Yet it is almost always one of the things travellers keep talking about afterwards, usually with some surprise, because nobody expected much of it beforehand.

The cooking here is mild. No fiery peaks, no complicated sauces. Rice, beans, vegetables, fruit, fish. If you only eat in hotels for the first few days, you quickly assume that is all there is. That changes the moment you sit down in a village restaurant, or cross over to the Caribbean side, where everything is cooked with coconut and suddenly tastes like another country.

Gallo pinto: how every day starts

Breakfast is warm and it is the same every morning: gallo pinto. Rice and black beans go into the pan together with onion, red pepper and coriander, and the cooking liquid from the beans stains the rice a greyish brown. Hence the name, spotted rooster.

Alongside it you usually get a fried egg, a warm tortilla, a spoonful of natilla and a few slices of fried ripe plantain. Natilla is a thin sour cream, milder than the soured creams you know at home. And there will be a bottle of Salsa Lizano on the table. That sauce is hard to describe: brown, faintly sweet and sour, somewhere in the direction of Worcestershire sauce but gentler. Ticos put it on everything. Take a bottle home, it is the best souvenir you will ever find in a supermarket.

On the Caribbean coast the same dish is called rice and beans and the rice is cooked in coconut milk. Same base, different world.

For the record: Nicaragua claims gallo pinto as well. That argument has never been settled and is cheerfully kept alive on both sides of the border.

The casado and the soda

If you eat only one thing in Costa Rica, make it the casado. Rice, beans, a salad of cabbage and tomato, fried plantain, often a scoop of picadillo made with chayote or potato, and next to it chicken, fish, pork or beef. The name means married man. The idea behind it: everything neatly together on one plate, the way a wife used to send her husband off to work.

You eat it in a soda. That is not a soft drink but a small neighbourhood restaurant. Six tables, a blackboard with the dish of the day, mother in the kitchen. Sodas are the smartest thing you can do with your travel budget and just about the only place where you sit among the people who actually live there.

Go between twelve and two. Lunch is the main meal here. In the evening many families eat lightly and most sodas are closed.

What else to try

Olla de carne is the Sunday stew. Beef simmered for hours with yuca, corn on the cob, chayote, carrot and squash. Often you get the broth first and the meat afterwards.

Sopa negra is black bean soup with a poached egg in it. Sounds heavy, is not.

Chifrijo is on the menu in almost every bar: rice, beans, crisp fried pork and pico de gallo in a bowl, with tortilla chips on the side. Meant to be shared, usually not shared.

Ceviche here is made with corvina, cured in lime juice with onion and coriander. Milder than the Peruvian version, and it often arrives with crackers, which takes a moment to get used to.

Patacones are green plantain, flattened and fried twice. On the coast they come with almost everything, along with a black bean dip.

And around Christmas everything revolves around tamales. Corn dough with meat and vegetables, steamed in banana leaf. Families make a hundred of them in a single afternoon. If you are offered one, say yes.

The Caribbean coast cooks differently

Puerto Viejo and Cahuita are in the same country but cook in another tradition. The Afro-Caribbean community brought coconut, ginger and thyme with them, and you taste it in the first bite.

Rice and beans is the base, with a whole chilli simmered in for aroma without making the dish hot. Rondon is the Sunday dish, from the English run down: fish or meat slowly thickening in coconut milk with root vegetables. It takes hours, so order it a day ahead. Pati is a savoury pastry parcel with Jamaican roots, handy on the road. Pan bon is a dark, lightly sweet bread with cheese and fruit baked into it.

Drink agua de sapo with it, a lemonade of ginger, lime and raw cane sugar. The name means toad water. It tastes better than that.

Guanacaste runs on corn

In the dry northwest tortillas are still made by hand and baked on a clay griddle. Ask for chorreadas, thick pancakes of fresh sweetcorn, served with natilla. Arroz de maiz is a hearty corn porridge with chicken, proper country food. Along the road you will find stalls selling cajetas, sweet blocks of milk and sugar, and rosquillas, hard corn biscuits that only become edible once you dunk them in your coffee.

Fruit you have never heard of

Mango, papaya and pineapple you know. It gets interesting after that.

Mamon chino is a hairy red ball you squeeze open; inside is something between a lychee and a grape. Guanabana is creamy and slightly sour and works best in a shake. Cas is a small green guava, quite sharp, usually served as a drink. Pejibaye is a boiled palm fruit that tastes more like potato than fruit. You buy it in a bag at the roadside with a blob of mayonnaise on top, and it is exactly as odd as it sounds.

The best place to see all of this is the feria del agricultor, the farmers market held in almost every town on Saturday morning. Go early. By nine the best of it is gone.

Coffee

Coffee built this country. In the nineteenth century Costa Rica was the first in Central America to trade it seriously, and the proceeds paid for the National Theatre in San Jose, among other things. A law still in force allows arabica and nothing else.

Tarrazu is the best known region, south of the capital, where the beans ripen slowly at altitude. Beyond that there is the Central Valley, Tres Rios, Naranjo, Orosi and the area around Monteverde. Half a day on a finca is, to my mind, one of the better outings on any tour. You walk through the bushes, see the beneficio where the beans are hulled and dried, and taste at the end why a light roast is something entirely different from what sits in your cupboard at home.

At home Ticos brew their coffee with a chorreador, a wooden stand holding a cotton sock through which you pour hot water. They cost almost nothing and fit in a suitcase. You order either cafe negro or cafe con leche; with the latter the hot milk usually arrives separately.

Cacao

On the Caribbean side cacao is what coffee is in the highlands. Bribri and Cabecar families have grown it for centuries and now give tours on their own land. You see the pods growing straight out of the trunk, taste the white pulp around the beans that is surprisingly fresh, smell the fermentation boxes and grind a portion yourself on a stone at the end. After that you look at a supermarket bar rather differently.

What to drink

Ask for a batido or a refresco natural: fruit in the blender, with water or with milk. Add sin azucar if you would rather not have three spoons of sugar, because they go in as standard. Agua dulce is hot water with dissolved cane sugar, the drink of the coffee pickers. Horchata is a rice drink with cinnamon.

Beer is Imperial or Pilsen, and around San Jose and the coastal towns there is a decent craft beer scene by now. The national spirit is guaro, distilled from sugar cane, usually the Cacique brand. The favourite shot is chiliguaro: guaro with tomato juice, lime and tabasco, ice cold and down in one. If you want to take something home, a Costa Rican rum such as Centenario is a better choice than the guaro.

Vegetarian, vegan, allergies

Vegetarians have an easy time here. Rice, beans, vegetables, egg and fruit are the core of the cooking. Ask in a soda for a casado vegetariano and nobody will make a fuss. Vegan works too, just watch the natilla and the cheese, so add sin queso, sin natilla. Places like Nosara, Santa Teresa, Monteverde and Puerto Viejo have proper vegan restaurants.

With a gluten allergy you are fine on corn tortillas, rice and beans. Do have your allergy written on a card in Spanish; in practice that works better than explaining. Nuts and peanuts barely appear in the traditional kitchen.

Practical notes

Tap water is fine to drink in most of the country and tastes perfectly good. In a few remote coastal towns filtered water is better, and your accommodation will tell you so without being asked. Bring a refillable bottle.

Your bill usually already includes 13 percent tax and 10 percent service. An extra tip is therefore not required. Those who are happy round up. For guides and drivers it is different, there a tip is customary.

The food is not spicy. If you want heat, ask for salsa picante or for the jar of fermented chillies that is often on the table.

Three phrases you will need. Buen provecho you say to anyone who is eating, including strangers you walk past. La cuenta, por favor is the bill, please. And que me recomienda will almost always get you something better than the menu.

How we build this into a trip

Food is the shortest route into a country. We make sure you do not end up in hotel restaurants for the whole trip. A morning on a coffee finca, a cacao visit with a Bribri family, a cooking class in a village, or simply a guide who knows which soda in which town is worth stopping for. Those are often the stories that stay with people.

Plan your trip to Costa Rica and request a personal, tailor-made proposal with no obligation.

Search for a Costa Rica holiday and you’ll see the phrase everywhere: “all inclusive.” It sounds simple and safe — one price, everything covered. But is an all-inclusive resort really the best way to experience Costa Rica? Here’s an honest comparison, including where all-inclusive works well and where a tailor-made trip gives you far more of what makes this country special.

What “all inclusive” really means in Costa Rica

True all-inclusive resorts do exist in Costa Rica, mostly concentrated in the Guanacaste beach region in the northwest (around Papagayo, Tamarindo and Playa Flamingo). You pay one price for your room, meals, drinks and some resort activities. It’s convenient, predictable and great if your main goal is to relax in one spot by the pool and the beach.

The trade-off: most of Costa Rica’s magic — the cloud forests, volcanoes, wildlife, hanging bridges, hot springs and small towns — is not at the resort. All-inclusive keeps you in one place, so you see one slice of the country.

What a tailor-made trip means

A tailor-made trip is a route designed around you: your dates, your pace, your budget and the things you actually want to see. You move through several regions — for example Arenal volcano, Monteverde cloud forest and a Pacific beach — staying in hand-picked lodges and hotels, with transport and guided tours arranged for you. It’s not backpacking and it’s not rigid group touring; it’s a personal itinerary with everything organised behind the scenes.

All-inclusive vs tailor-made: an honest comparison

• Variety: All-inclusive = one location. Tailor-made = multiple regions and landscapes.
• Wildlife & nature: Limited at a resort; central to a tailor-made route (national parks, rainforest, volcanoes).
• Convenience: All-inclusive is very hands-off. Tailor-made is also hands-off during the trip — we handle logistics — but you experience much more.
• Value: All-inclusive can look cheaper up front, but you often pay for food and drink you don’t use, plus paid excursions to leave the resort. Tailor-made puts your budget into experiences.
• Best for: All-inclusive suits a pure beach-and-pool week. Tailor-made suits travellers who want to see Costa Rica — nature, culture and a few beach days too.

Can you have both?

Yes — and this is what many of our travellers choose. We design a tailor-made route through the volcanoes and rainforest, then finish with several nights of pure relaxation at a beach hotel or resort on the Pacific. You get the adventure and the wind-down, timed for the best weather in each region. That’s the beauty of building the trip around you instead of around a single property.

The bottom line

If all you want is to switch off by a pool for a week, an all-inclusive resort in Guanacaste will do the job. But if you’re travelling all the way to Costa Rica, it would be a shame to see only the inside of one resort. A tailor-made trip lets you experience the wildlife, volcanoes and cloud forests that make this country world-famous — and still enjoy the beach.

Tell us what you’re dreaming of and we’ll design the perfect balance for you.

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