Guanacaste Travel Video Guide

Guanacaste Travel Itinerary

• Maps and flag of Costa Rica
• Guanacaste travel photos
• Guanacaste travel forum
• Flights to Guanacaste
• Hotels in Guanacaste
• Hostels in Guanacaste
• Buy the guide book!

Guanacaste province , hemmed in by mountains to the east and the Pacific to the west, and bordered to the north by Nicaragua, is distinctly different from the rest of Costa Rica. Though little tangible remains of the dance, music and folklore for which the region is famous, there is undeniably something special about the place. Granted that much of the landscape has come about essentially through the slaughter of tropical dry forest, it is still some of the prettiest you'll see in the country, especially in the wet season, when wide open spaces, stretching from the ocean across savanna grasses to the brooding humps of volcanoes, are washed in a beautifully muted range of earth tones, blues, yellows and mauves. Its history , too, is distinct: if not for a very close vote in 1824, it might have been part of Nicaragua, which would have made Costa Rica very small indeed.

Most tourists come for the beaches : specifically those where the Nicoya Peninsula joins the mainland (roughly two-thirds of the mountainous peninsula is in Guanacaste, with the lower third belonging to Puntarenas province). Several beaches are also nesting grounds for marine turtles . An enormous number of hotels, some all-inclusive resort types, are being built on both coasts, and with the opening of the Liberia airport to international traffic, winter charter tourism has well and truly arrived. Inland, however, mass tourism is less evident. Here the dry heat, relatively accessible terrain and panoramic views make Guanacaste the best place in the country for walking and horse-riding , especially around the mud pots and stewing sulphur waters of Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja and through the tropical dry forest cover of Parque Nacional Santa Rosa . The only towns of any significance for travellers are the provincial capital of Liberia , and Nicoya , the main town of the peninsula. If you are overnighting on the way to Nicaragua , La Cruz makes a useful base.

Much of Guanacaste has long been put under pasture for cattle ranching, and a huge part of the region's appeal is the sabanero (cowboy) culture, based around the hacienda (ranch) and ganado (cattle). This dependence on cattle culture has its downside, however, and much of Guanacaste is now degraded pastureland. Although

impressive efforts to regenerate former tropical dry forest are under way - at Parque Nacional Santa Rosa and Parque Nacional Guanacaste , for example - it is unlikely that this rare type of life zone will ever recover its original extent.

The province is significantly greener, and prettier, in the "wet" season (May-Nov), generally agreed to be the best time to come, with the added benefit of fewer travellers and lighter rainfall than in the rest of the country.

Your Tips For Guanacaste

• Zona Sur Costa Rica Travel Videos
  Costa Rica Travel Itinerary
  Costa Rica's Zona Sur (southern zone) is the country's least-known region, both for Ticos and for travellers. - Costa Rica
  

• San Jose Costa Rica Travel Videos
  Costa Rica Travel Itinerary
  Sprawling smack in the middle of the fertile Valle Central, SAN JOSE has a spectacular setting, ringed by the jagged silhouettes of soaring mountains - some of them volcanoes - on all sides. - Costa Rica
  

• Zona Norte Costa Rica Travel Videos
  Costa Rica Travel Itinerary
  Costa Rica's Zona Norte ("northern zone") spans the hundred-odd kilometres from the base of the Cordillera Central to just short of the mauve-blue mountains of southern Nicaragua. - Costa Rica
  

• Limon Costa Rica Travel Videos
  Costa Rica Travel Itinerary
  Sparsely populated Limon province sweeps south in an arc from Nicaragua down to Panama. - Costa Rica
  

• Central Pacific and Southern Nicoya Costa Rica Travel Videos
  Costa Rica Travel Itinerary
  While Costa Rica's Central Pacific area is less of a geographical or cultural entity than other regions of the country, it does contain several of its most popular tourist spots, among them the number-one attraction, the Reserva Biologica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde (Monteverde Cloudforest Reserve), draped over the ridge of the Cordillera de Tilaran. - Costa Rica
  

• Guanacaste Costa Rica Travel Videos
  Costa Rica Travel Itinerary
  Guanacaste province , hemmed in by mountains to the east and the Pacific to the west, and bordered to the north by Nicaragua, is distinctly different from the rest of Costa Rica. - Costa Rica
  

• Valle Central and the highlands Costa Rica Travel Videos
  Costa Rica Travel Itinerary
  Costa Rica's Valle Central - literally "Central Valley", though it's actually an inter-mountain plateau poised at an elevation of between 3000 and 4000m - is a predominantly agricultural region, with staggered green coffee terraces set amidst patchwork-quilt fields and loomed over by the blue-black summits of the surrounding mountains. - Costa Rica