Visiting Costa Rica--Very Seasonal Guanacaste Province

Costa Rica has been a destination for ecologists since at least the 1970s, well before it had ecotourism infrastructure--one of its strengths today. The attraction of Costa Rica to professional biologists was having so many different tropical habitats in a small area. Naturally, at 9 degrees north of the Equator, there is tropical rainforest. A line of mountains runs down the center of Costa Rica, so while the rainforest as sea level is always very warm, as you go up there are a whole series of fascinating very wet montane forests.  Cross over the mountains and lowland rainforest is there but it is not quite the same.

lowland rainforest, Costa Rica

Finally Costa Rica has dry tropical forest, a region that is very rainy half the year and rainless the rest of the year.  This a climate extends along the Pacific coast of Central America, ending in Guanacaste Province, in northwestern Costa Rica. Many elements of that community are shared with Mexico and even Arizona.

I had imagined the tropical rainforest but tropical dry forest was quite unexpected.
It is lovely and green in the wet season (March to October)

flowering vine, Guanacaste, rainy season

But then the rain stops. The temperatures soar to 100 F.  And everything dries out.

Cracks open in the ground big enough to swallow your pen and maybe the keys.

Most trees lose their leaves.

And many trees flower!

All through the dry season, different big tree species come into bloom. They save water to flower when leafless and make a dramatic display that draws pollinators from far away. The colors are truly tropical: orange, red, yellow, hot pink. And the pollinators, birds, bees, butterflies, are a joy to watch.

One of the natives that flowers in the dry season is Plumeria, frangipani. (See my blog post about Plumeria link). Here it is flowering on a hillside above a Pacific beach. Note the columnar cactus.

A rainless period of hot weather, from October to March, with a coastline of sandy Pacific beaches...that's another great thing about Guanacaste.

Then, just when you've been hot and dry, parched and dusty, for what seems forever, the rainy season clouds roll in, the skies open, and the cycle repeats.

One of my favorite places.

Comments and corrections welcome.

Kathy Keeler, A Wandering Botanist

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