Costa Rica's Caribbean coast feels like a different country. The population is substantially Afro-Caribbean, descended from Jamaican workers who arrived in the nineteenth century for the railway and the banana plantations; Creole English is spoken alongside Spanish, cooking is built on coconut, and the music is calypso and reggae rather than cumbia.
The southern Caribbean
Puerto Viejo de Talamanca is the centre of it: a small, scruffy town with a coast road running south past a string of beaches. Along it are Playa Cocles, with surf; Punta Uva, the prettiest, calm water and sand between palms; and Manzanillo, at the edge of the Gandoca-Manzanillo refuge. The whole stretch is best covered by bicycle, which is how people here get around.
Cahuita National Park, a little north, has a flat eight-kilometre trail beside the sea, a coral reef offshore, and a very high chance of sloths and howler monkeys. Entry at the Kelly Creek gate works on voluntary donation — an unusual arrangement the local community has defended firmly.
Inland, the Bribri indigenous territory can be visited with guides from the community itself, who explain cacao growing and traditional processing.
Tortuguero
Tortuguero, further north, has no road access: you arrive by boat through a network of canals, or by light aircraft. Travelling those canals at dawn, in an electric boat or a kayak, is the most accessible wildlife watching in the country: caimans, river turtles, kingfishers, monkeys and, with luck, manatees.
It is also a major nesting site for the Atlantic green turtle. Nesting runs from July to October and is observed only at night, with an authorised guide, without white torches or flash photography.
The food
People eat differently here. Caribbean rice and beans is cooked in coconut milk and should not be confused with the central valley's gallo pinto. Rondón is a slow stew of fish or meat with coconut, root vegetables and plantain. Panamanian chilli is used liberally, and sweet bon bread is everywhere.
When to go
The Caribbean has its own rainfall pattern, opposite to the Pacific's: the driest and most reliable months are usually September and October, exactly when the rest of the country is at its wettest. February and March also work well.