August is the heart of the green season in Guanacaste: workable mornings, showers most afternoons, and fresher air than the dry-season heat, around 30°C. The forest is at its richest and the rivers and waterfalls at their fullest. Offshore, the olive ridley arribadas scale up, and from about August the southern humpback whales begin reaching the Gulf of Papagayo, in smaller numbers than in the South Pacific. Crowds are thin and prices low. Best tours this month: Tenorio and Río Celeste, and birding and wildlife walks. Best for: nature lovers who don't mind an afternoon shower.
August: a guide’s favorite month
By August the green season is in full swing, and here’s a confession: it’s one of our favorite months to be a guide. When February and March push past 35°C, August sits around a fresher 30°C — humid, yes, but cooler and gentler than the first hard rains of May and June. The land is deep green, the rivers run full, and there is something simply magical, for anyone who loves nature, about watching the water run and the animals thrive in it.
The pattern still favors you
Clear, workable mornings, showers in the afternoon. It rains more than July — the canícula‘s dry window has closed by now — but the rain rarely ruins a well-planned day, and it’s what keeps everything lush.
The forest is at its richest
Months of rain have made the canopy dense and the waterfalls thunderous. Howler monkeys call, capuchins work the branches, blue morpho butterflies drift through the understory, and the frogs are loud after every shower. Two hours north, in the Tenorio rainforest, is where we go looking for sloths. It’s one of the best wildlife-watching stretches of the whole year. Explore Tenorio & Río Celeste on our rainforest experience. Our bird-watching & wildlife walks are at their fullest now.
The great arribada scales up
August is when the olive ridley turtle nesting shifts from the tens of thousands into the hundreds of thousands. The truly enormous arrivals peak in September and October, but by August the spectacle is well underway — turtles coming ashore over several nights, timed to the dark of the moon, around the last quarter and the nights before the new moon. No one can promise you a date; you read the moon. One of the two main arribada beaches in the country, Playa Nancite, sits protected inside Santa Rosa’s dry forest; the famous Ostional is a couple of hours south. Discover the dry forest on our bird-watching & wildlife experience.
Southern humpback whales
From about August the southern humpbacks — the ones that migrate up from the waters off Antarctica — begin reaching our coast, and they stay into October. The great whale spectacle of Costa Rica is really in the South Pacific, around Uvita and the Osa, where the numbers are highest. But they reach our own Gulf of Papagayo too, in smaller numbers, and on a sunset boat outing this time of year you may well catch them. (Dolphins — spotted and bottlenose — are here all year regardless.)
Culture and the fields
The corn keeps coming; fresh elote runs right through the rainy season. And though the great national pilgrimage to the Virgin of Los Ángeles on August 2nd centers on Cartago, its devotion reaches here too — some make their own romerías to local churches that carry her name. August 15th, Mother’s Day, is a family holiday across the country.
Is August worth it?
August is green-season value at its best: fresher air than the dry-season furnace, low prices, thin crowds, the forest and rivers at their fullest, the turtle arribadas building toward their peak, and the first southern whales offshore. It rains most afternoons — that’s the deal — but for a nature lover, August in Guanacaste is, quietly, one of the most rewarding months of the year.
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By the Guanadreams team, led by Miller Contreras — naturalist guide, born and raised in Guanacaste.