The Road Less Driven: Discovering Costa Rica's Pacific North Coast

I've been on roads across six continents. I've driven through deserts, over mountain passes, and along coastlines that stopped my breath. But when I scouted the Pacific North Coast of Costa Rica — the route that would become our newest expedition — I understood something I hadn't quite articulated before: some roads don't just take you somewhere. They change how you see things.

This is that road.

DESTINATION — COSTA RICA'S PACIFIC NORTH COAST

A Country That Rewards the Traveller Who Drives

If you have ever been to Costa Rica, you have probably seen it the way most visitors do — from the window of a shuttle, between airports and resorts, catching glimpses of a landscape so extraordinary it makes you want to stop the van and get out. But the van doesn't stop. And the road you're really meant to be on is somewhere else entirely.

The Pacific North Coast of Costa Rica — stretching from the volcanic plains of Guanacaste down through the Nicoya Peninsula to the surf breaks of Malpaís — is a different country from the one in the brochures. It is wilder, more textured, and more alive. The roads are not always paved. The rivers do not always have bridges. And the moments you will carry home from it are not the ones you planned.

This is the region we drive on our Costa Rica Expedition. And this is what you need to know about it before you come.

WHERE WE DRIVE — STOP 1

Guanacaste: The Beginning of Everything

Our journey begins in Liberia, the capital of Guanacaste province — a sun-baked, warm, utterly unhurried city in the northwest corner of Costa Rica.

Guanacaste is Costa Rica's driest province, its landscapes shaped by a shorter rainy season and a Pacific wind that comes in off the ocean and bends the trees at a permanent angle. It is a land of cattle farms and volcanic mountains, of wide dirt roads that lead to places that don't appear on most maps. It is also the province with the most dramatic concentration of beaches on the country's Pacific coast — from the calm waters of Flamingo to the consistent swells of Tamarindo, each one with its own distinct character.

But we don't come to Guanacaste for the resorts. We come because it is the door — and what's behind it is extraordinary.

WHERE WE DRIVE — STOP 2

The Northern Plains: Boca Tapada and the Cacao Country

Most visitors to Costa Rica never come here. And that, honestly, is what makes it so special.

The northern plains — the Llanuras del Norte — are a vast, flat, deeply green expanse that stretches toward the Nicaraguan border. The roads are red dirt and bone-white gravel. The rivers don't always have bridges. The towns are small and unhurried and genuinely curious about why you're here.

This is where Day 2 of our expedition takes you. We drive north from Liberia through the changing landscape of the Guanacaste lowlands, into the agricultural interior where cacao has been grown for generations and where the relationship between the land and the people who work it is still honest and close.

In Boca Tapada we stop at a working cacao plantation. A local farmer — not a tour guide, a farmer — walks you through the process from pod to paste. You taste cacao at every stage. You leave understanding something about chocolate that you could never have learned from a shop.

WHERE WE DRIVE — STOP 3

Arenal Volcano & La Fortuna: The Icon Up Close

There are landscapes that photograph well, and there are landscapes that change you. Arenal Volcano is both.

Standing at 1,633 metres above sea level, Arenal is one of the most perfectly formed stratovolcanoes on earth — a near-symmetrical cone that rises from the surrounding rainforest with an authority that makes everything around it feel small. It was one of the most active volcanoes in the world from 1968 through 2010, when it entered its current resting phase. It has not gone anywhere. It is simply quieter now.

La Fortuna, the town at its base, is the adventure capital of Costa Rica — and for good reason. But we don't come here for the zip lines and the tourist packages. We come because the drive around Lake Arenal — the 80km² reservoir built in the 1970s at the volcano's feet — is one of the most extraordinary roads in Central America. And because at the end of a long day of driving, there is nothing quite like soaking in a natural hot spring resort with a volcano rising above you in the dark.

WHERE WE DRIVE — STOP 4

The Nicoya Peninsula: The World's Only Blue Zone in the Americas

The Nicoya Peninsula stretches 140 kilometres south from its base in Guanacaste, and it is unlike anywhere else on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. It is separated from the mainland by the Gulf of Nicoya and the Tempisque estuary, which means that historically, the only way in was by ferry — or by road that required, let's say, commitment.

That history of relative isolation is exactly what preserved what makes Nicoya extraordinary. The interior of the peninsula — cattle farms, steep hills, scattered villages, roads that demand full attention — is one of the most authentic corners of Costa Rica that still exists.

And then there is the other thing. The thing that makes scientists and journalists come here from around the world.

The Nicoya Peninsula is one of only five Blue Zones on Earth — places where people consistently live past 100 years old.

The others are in Sardinia, Okinawa, Ikaria, and Loma Linda, California. Nicoya is the only one in the Americas.

The longevity of Nicoyans is attributed to a combination of factors — a diet rich in beans, corn, and tropical fruit; strong social bonds; a deep sense of purpose; and a physical way of life that never entirely stopped. The local philosophy of Pura Vida — pure life — is not a marketing slogan here. It is genuinely how people live.

We drive through the heart of the peninsula — up to the Vistamar viewpoint at its highest point, where on a clear day you can see the Pacific stretching to the horizon in one direction and the mountains of the mainland in the other. It is the kind of view that makes you stop talking.

WHERE WE DRIVE — STOP 5

Tamarindo & Samara: Where the Pacific Greets You by Name

Tamarindo is the most internationally known beach town on Costa Rica's Pacific North Coast — and it earns its reputation. Golden beaches, consistent surf, a strip of restaurants and bars that stay lively into the evening, and a laid-back energy that makes it easy to understand why so many people come for a week and stay for a year.

But Tamarindo is also our home base for the final nights of the expedition. The Tamarindo Diria hotel — where we stay — sits right on the beach, and the sunset ocean view rooms look out over one of the most beautiful stretches of Pacific coastline you will find anywhere in Central America. After days of river crossings and red dirt roads and mountain passes, arriving here feels like something you've earned.

Samara, 45 minutes south, is Tamarindo's quieter cousin — a horseshoe bay with calm water, a fraction of the crowds, and a local community that hasn't been entirely reshaped by tourism. It is the Costa Rica people fall in love with and then spend years trying to describe to their friends back home.

WHERE WE DRIVE — THE MOMENT EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT

Malpaís: The Day We Drive on the Beach

People come back from this expedition and talk about the volcano. They talk about the river crossings, the cacao farm, and the hot springs. And then they talk about the beach.

On Day 5 of the expedition, we drive the Pacific coastline near Malpaís on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. The road — and I use the term loosely — runs along the sand between the jungle and the surf. Your tyres are on the beach. The Pacific is three metres to your right. Howler monkeys are somewhere in the canopy to your left.

Nobody warns you how much it changes you, that moment. When the road disappears, and the beach appears, and you realise the two are the same thing.

WHEN TO COME

The Best Time to Drive Costa Rica's Pacific North Coast

Costa Rica has two seasons: dry (verano, November to April) and green (wet), (invierno, May to October). On the Pacific North Coast, this distinction matters more than almost anywhere else in the country.

Winter is the sweet spot for our expedition — and here is why. The dry season is fully established. The roads that were impassable in October are firm and drivable. The skies are clear enough to see Arenal from the lake road. The Pacific beaches are at their calmest and most spectacular. The rivers we cross are running at manageable levels rather than the rushing torrents of the wet season.

It is also, for whatever reason, the moment when Pura Vida feels most present. The light in the winter has a quality to it — golden and low and long — that makes everything look like a painting you've seen before but can't quite place.

WHY DRIVE IT WITH ADVENTURES OVERLAND

This Country Deserves to Be Driven. Here Is How We Do It.

You can visit Costa Rica without driving it. Millions of people do, every year. They see it from shuttles and tour vans and the backs of taxis, and they go home having seen some of the most beautiful scenery on earth through a window that was someone else's decision.

We do it differently.

Our convoy of 8 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado 4x4s moves through this country at the pace the roads demand — which is to say, slowly enough to actually see it. When something interesting appears, we stop. When a river crossing requires careful judgement, we stop and assess it together. When the Arenal volcano appears above the lake at golden hour, and everyone goes quiet, we don't have a schedule to keep.

I personally scouted and planned this itinerary. Every stop, every hotel, every road, every crossing was chosen because it delivers something that a guidebook cannot prepare you for. I wanted to build a route that felt like a privilege — not because it is expensive, but because the places it takes you are the places you have to earn with your own wheels.

FROM THE WRITER'S DESK

A personal note from Julie Fishman, General Manager, USA — the person who planned this route.

Costa Rica didn't move me the way I expected. I've been to places that are more dramatic, more remote, more technically demanding. But this country has something those places don't have — a philosophy baked into its roads and its people and its impossible green, and that philosophy is Pura Vida.

Pura Vida is not a greeting, though everyone uses it as one. It is not a tourism slogan, though you'll see it on merchandise everywhere. It is a way of being in the world that says: the life you have right now, in this moment, on this road, is enough. More than enough. It is everything.

When I was scouting the route that became our Costa Rica Expedition, I kept finding myself stopping the car and just sitting there. Not photographing anything, not doing anything. Just sitting with the fact that this road exists, and I was on it.

I built this expedition because I wanted other people to have that feeling. The feeling that the world is bigger and stranger and more generous than we usually let ourselves believe. That feeling is what every road we drive at Adventures Overland is trying to deliver.

Costa Rica delivers it better than most.

— Julie Fishman

General Manager, USA, Adventures Overland