Week left in the month, you still have time to catch the tail end of Costa Rica’s dry season — warm temperatures around 86°F (30°C), highly active wildlife, and mornings that are reliably sunny and clear. Brief afternoon showers may appear, but they are short, refreshing, and honestly part of what makes this particular window so beautiful. If you can move fast, go. If you can’t, use this guide to plan April next year before anyone else does.
“There’s a specific quality of light in Costa Rica in late April that doesn’t exist anywhere else, at any other time. The forest is deep green and just barely damp. The air smells like warm earth after the first rains. And the animals — the toucans, the macaws, the howler monkeys in the distance — are impossibly loud, as if they know something is ending.”
We’ve been guiding travelers through this country for years, and we still notice it every April. Something shifts. The dry season starts to exhale. The green season is gathering itself just beyond the horizon. And for the last two or three weeks of April, Costa Rica exists in this extraordinary in-between state — warm and wild and quietly, unapologetically perfect.
Most people don’t know about this window. They book December or January because every “best time to visit” article told them to. They miss April entirely. And then someone tells them what they missed and they spend the next year trying to work it into their schedule.
This guide is for two kinds of people: those who still have time to catch the end of April, and those who want to make sure they don’t miss it next year.
What the Weather Actually Feels Like Right Now
Costa Rica’s dry season runs from December through April, and right now — in the final stretch — it still very much holds. Temperatures across the Pacific coast, the Central Valley, and the Caribbean lowlands are sitting around 86°F (30°C) during the day. Mornings are clear almost without exception. The sky that particular shade of blue that makes every photograph look edited when it isn’t.
What changes in late April is the afternoon. Around 3 or 4pm, you might notice the clouds building over the mountains. Sometimes they break into rain — a warm, heavy shower that lasts forty minutes and then vanishes completely, leaving everything cleaner and greener and smelling extraordinary. Other days the clouds just drift past and the evening is clear all the way to sunset. Either way, it is not a reason to stay home.
30°C
per day
green season
Understanding Costa Rica’s Seasons
April is the seam between these two seasons. You get the sunshine of one and the first green blush of the other. That combination — and the feeling it produces — is what we’ve never been able to explain adequately to people who haven’t experienced it.
Why Wildlife Viewing Peaks in April
We want to say something clearly that most travel guides gloss over: April is one of the single best months for wildlife in Costa Rica, and it is not particularly close. The dry season has given animals months of undisturbed routine. The trails are in perfect condition. And as the first rains begin to hint at arrival, something in the forest accelerates — activity increases, calls get louder, and encounters that might take an hour to arrange in the peak season happen within fifteen minutes of entering a trail.
Scarlet macaws are actively nesting along the Pacific coast right now, particularly near Carara National Park between Jacó and Manuel Antonio. You can hear them before you see them — that specific harsh call that stops every conversation cold. Sea turtles are beginning their seasonal arrivals on Caribbean beaches, which will build through May and June. Sloths in Arenal and Manuel Antonio are in full activity mode. And in Monteverde’s cloud forest, over 400 bird species are present, including the resplendent quetzal — a bird that serious birders travel across the world to see.
From Our Guides · La Fortuna“April is the month when we have to actively slow guests down on the trail. They want to keep walking to see more, but we keep stopping them — because what’s right in front of them is already extraordinary. The animals haven’t been heavily disturbed. The groups are smaller. You’re often the only humans in a section of forest. That kind of encounter doesn’t happen by accident — it happens because of timing.”
Whether you’re moving by boat through the canal system at Tortuguero, hiking the primary forest trails of Corcovado — one of the most biodiverse places on the planet — or standing on a hanging bridge in Monteverde watching the cloud forest move around you, April gives you something that peak season rarely does: time and space to actually feel where you are.
April ends in just over a week. If you’re already in Costa Rica or within easy reach, there is still time to catch the dry season’s final days. If you’re planning ahead — April 2026 bookings open now. Our most popular itineraries fill by January. Don’t get caught waiting again.
Semana Santa: What Just Passed and What It Means for You
Easter Week is over — and that changes everything.
Semana Santa — Holy Week — is Costa Rica’s biggest domestic travel event. The Pacific beaches fill with families from San José, Cartago, and Alajuela. Hotels in Manuel Antonio, Tamarindo, and Jacó reach capacity weeks in advance. It is loud, festive, and genuinely wonderful if you want to experience Costa Rica the way Costa Ricans experience it.
But Semana Santa 2025 has now passed. What that means for anyone visiting in the final days of April is significant: the crowds that defined the beach towns last week have gone home. Hotel rooms that were fully booked are available again, often at post-holiday rates. The trails and beaches that were packed with families are quiet. You’re arriving at exactly the right moment — after the celebration, before the green season.
If you were waiting for Semana Santa to clear before booking, this is your window. It won’t stay quiet for long. May brings its own wave of travelers chasing the green season, and the country never really empties.
Where to Go in Late April: Four Regions Worth Every Day
With the dry season still holding and post-Semana Santa quiet settling in, these are the four regions we’d put on any late-April itinerary right now.