Introduction to Central Pacific Costa Rica

After Guanacaste, the beaches of Costa Rica's central Pacific coast are easily the country's most popular. Options here range from the surfer and snowbird hangout of Jacó, to the ecotourist mecca of Manuel Antonio, to isolated and diminutive Dominical, with its jungle-clad hillsides and rainforest waterfalls. The region is also home to some spectacular national parks.

Jacó is the closest major beach destination to San José. It has historically been a top choice for young surfers and city-dwelling Costa Ricans. Today, Jacó, and the beaches around it, are booming with a rapidly expanding pool of condominiums, vacation rentals, and retirement homes. Just outside of Jacó sits Carara National Park, one of the last places in Costa Rica where you can see the disappearing dry forest join the damp, humid forests that extend south down the coast. If you're lucky, you might even glimpse a scarlet macaw here.

For its part, Manuel Antonio remains one of the country's foremost ecotourist destinations, with a host of hotel and lodging options and an easily accessible national park that combines the exuberant lushness of a lowland tropical rainforest with several gorgeous beaches. Manuel Antonio National Park is home to all four of Costa Rica's monkey species, as well as a wealth of other easily viewed flora and fauna.

If you're looking to get away from it all, Dominical and the beaches south of Dominical should be your top choice on this coast. Still a small village, the beach town of Dominical is flanked by even more remote and undeveloped beaches, including those found inside Ballena Marine National Park.

Finally, if you can tear yourself away from the beaches and coastline here, and head slightly inland, you'll find Chirripó National Park, a misty cloud forest that becomes a barren páramo (a region above 3,000m/9,840 ft.) at the peak of its namesake, Mount Chirripó -- the tallest peak in Costa Rica.

The climate here is considerably more humid than that farther north in Guanacaste, but it's not nearly as steamy as along the south Pacific or Caribbean coasts.