Costa Rica

Costa Rica

The howler monkeys start before sunrise, a sound somewhere between a roar and a foghorn rolling through the canopy. Costa Rica compresses cloud forests, active volcanoes, Pacific surf breaks, and Caribbean mangroves into a country smaller than West Virginia. You can stand at the crater of Arenal at dusk watching orange lava glow while hot springs bubble a kilometre downhill. Then it rains, hard, because it always rains.