Costa Rica

Costa Rica is a small country.

It has a sea on each side. It has tall volcanoes and green forests. The capital city is San José.

Costa Rica is a small country in Central America. The Caribbean Sea washes its northeast coast and the Pacific Ocean its southwest coast, and at its narrowest point the two are only about 120 kilometers apart. Nicaragua lies to the north and Panama to the southeast.

Mountains and volcanoes run down the middle of the country. The capital, San José, sits in a high valley called the Valle Central, where more than half of all Costa Ricans live. Many people use the phrase pura vida, which means pure life, to say hello or thank you.

Costa Rica stretches northwest to southeast between Nicaragua and Panama, with a Caribbean coastline of about 300 km and a Pacific coastline of about 1,015 km; at its narrowest the two coasts are about 120 km apart. Its heartland is the Valle Central (Meseta Central), an upland basin that has been the center of the country since colonial times, holds more than half the population and is devoted to growing coffee.

Britannica describes it as generally regarded as Central America's most stable and democratic country: the 1949 constitution created a one-house legislature and an independent electoral body, abolished the army and gave women the right to vote, and more than nine-tenths of people can read. Ecotourism and foreign investment shifted the economy from farming to services and technology by the late 20th century. The World Bank counted 5,152,950 people in 2025; Laura Fernández Delgado is president (2026).

San José is the biggest city.

It has a beautiful old theater. Long ago, people carved giant stone balls. You can still see them today.

San José, the capital, stands in the Valle Central at about 1,160 meters above sea level, so it is mild, around 21 °C on average. Its most famous building is the National Theatre, dating from 1897, with marble staircases and a painted ceiling. Under the Plaza of Culture, a museum shows gold objects made long ago.

In the south, near the Diquís River delta, people living in chiefdoms between the years 500 and 1500 carved huge stone spheres, some up to 2.57 meters across. UNESCO made four of their villages a World Heritage Site in 2014. Far out in the Pacific, about 530 kilometers away, lies Cocos Island, another World Heritage Site.

San José lies in the Valle Central at 1,160 m, with a mean temperature of 21 °C and more than 1,800 mm of rain a year. Most cultural institutions are there: the Renaissance-style National Theatre (1897) on the Plaza of Culture, with a ceiling fresco and murals of Costa Rican life; the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum beneath the plaza; and the National Museum, with the largest collection of pre-Columbian art. Many of Cartago's older buildings were destroyed by earthquakes.

UNESCO inscribed the precolumbian chiefdom settlements with stone spheres of the Diquís in 2014: four sites (Finca 6, Batambal, El Silencio and Grijalba-2) with mounds, paved areas, burials and spheres up to 2.57 m in diameter still in their original places, from chiefdoms of 500–1500 CE. Cocos Island National Park (1997), 530 km offshore, protects 202,100 ha, including the most diverse coral reefs of the Eastern Tropical Pacific.

Costa Rica has many volcanoes.

Some have roads right up to the top. Thick green forests cover lots of the land. The Caribbean side gets rain almost all year.

Two mountain chains run down Costa Rica. The northern one is full of volcanoes, such as Irazú and Poás, which have paved roads up to their active craters, and Arenal, the country's youngest cone-shaped volcano. The southern chain, the Talamanca range, is made of granite, and it holds the highest mountain, Cerro Chirripó, at 3,819 meters.

Thick evergreen forest covers about one-third of the country. On the Caribbean side, trade winds bring rain all year. On the Pacific side there is a wet season and a dry season, and the northwest has dry forest. Earthquakes are a danger in most of the country.

Two chains form Costa Rica's spine: the volcanically active Cordillera Volcánica in the north (the Guanacaste, Tilarán and Central ranges) and the Cordillera de Talamanca in the south, a massive granite batholith. Irazú (3,432 m) and Poás (2,704 m) have paved roads to their active craters and, with earthquakes, are serious hazards for the Valle Central; Arenal, the youngest stratovolcano, erupted in 1968. Cerro Chirripó, 3,819 m, is the highest point in Costa Rica and in southern Central America; UNESCO notes glacial cirques and lakes on the Talamanca range, found nowhere else in the region.

Caribbean trade winds bring year-round rain, while the Pacific side has a wet season (about May to October in the north, April to December in the south). Broad-leaved evergreen forest covers about one-third of the land. The Área de Conservación Guanacaste (UNESCO, 1999), 147,000 ha, runs about 100 km from the Pacific to Caribbean-basin rainforest and protects the best dry forest from Central America to northern Mexico.

Costa Rica has bright red-eyed frogs.

A green and red bird called the quetzal lives in its mountain forests. Jaguars, monkeys and sloths live there too. Caimans rest by the rivers.

Costa Rica's animals come from two continents. Monkeys, anteaters and sloths came from South America, and deer, wild cats, otters, coyotes and foxes came from North America. Tropical birds, snakes, iguanas and frogs are common.

In the Talamanca mountains, about 600 kinds of birds have been recorded, including the shining green resplendent quetzal, and all the wild cats of Central America live there. In the dry northwest, the Guanacaste conservation area protects jaguars, ocelots, tapirs, at least 40 kinds of bats, American crocodiles and spectacled caimans.

Britannica notes that Costa Rica's abundant mammals have major ties to both continents: monkeys, anteaters and sloths are South American in origin, while deer, wild cats, weasels, otters, coyotes and foxes are North American. Its many life zones have long drawn tropical biologists, for example to the research stations of the Organization for Tropical Studies.

UNESCO records about 215 mammal and some 600 bird species in the Talamanca–La Amistad property, among them the resplendent quetzal, every cat species of Central America, the endangered ornate spider monkey and Central American tapir, and the vulnerable black-crowned Central American squirrel monkey. The Área de Conservación Guanacaste holds about 7,000 plant and more than 900 vertebrate species, including jaguar, margay, jaguarundi and ocelot, some 500 birds such as the endangered great green macaw, and the American crocodile and spectacled caiman. Around Cocos Island, UNESCO highlights large ocean predators such as the endangered scalloped hammerhead shark.

About 5.2 million people live in Costa Rica.

Most people speak Spanish. Farmers grow coffee, bananas and pineapples. Painted oxcarts are a famous folk art.

About 5.2 million people lived in Costa Rica in 2025, and Spanish is the official language. More than half live in the Valle Central. Most people have European ancestors, and many others have mixed Indigenous and European ancestors. In Limón province on the Caribbean coast, many people descend from workers from the West Indies, mostly Jamaica, who came to build a railroad. Indigenous peoples such as the Bribrí and Cabécar live in the Talamanca mountains.

Coffee has been grown in the Valle Central since the 1800s, and bananas and pineapples are grown for export too. Costa Rica is famous for its brightly decorated oxcarts and wood carvings.

Britannica describes a population nearly four-fifths of European descent, with mestizos close to one-fifth. Guanacaste, once part of Nicaragua, blends Spanish, Indigenous and African heritage. Afro-Costa Ricans in Limón descend largely from West Indian, mainly Jamaican, workers brought in the 19th century to build the Atlantic Railroad and work on banana plantations; residence laws long confined them to the Caribbean coast, until in 1949 the government let them travel freely and become citizens. Indigenous peoples include the Bribrí and Cabécar in the Talamanca, the Boruca and Térraba near the Valle del General and the Guatuso in the north.

Spanish is official. Slightly less than three-fourths of people are Roman Catholic, the official religion, though the constitution guarantees freedom of religion. Education is free and compulsory, and about one-fourth of the national budget goes to it. Coffee from small family farms shaped settlement of the Valle Central in the 19th century; Britannica names bananas as the principal export, and by the late 20th century pineapples had passed coffee for second place.