High in the Talamanca Mountains, you follow a guide through the mist to a wild avocado tree just as the light comes up. Then a flash of emerald and crimson, and a quetzal settles on a branch with tail feathers trailing longer than its body.

Reachable only by boat or small plane, Tortuguero is the largest green turtle nesting beach in the Western Hemisphere. You walk the sand at night with a certified guide and watch by red light as she digs, lays her eggs, and slips back into the surf.

You paddle through a rainforest gorge where waterfalls spill straight into the river, then pull ashore at Pacuare Lodge, where dinner waits by candlelight and the jungle hums all night long.

After dark the forest changes shifts. Your guide's flashlight finds a glass frog so translucent you can see its heart beating, a tarantula waiting at the mouth of its burrow, and a toucan asleep with its bill tucked along its back.

Volcano-heated rivers tumble through the rainforest into pools of warm water. Sink in at golden hour with a drink in hand and watch the cone of Arenal slip in and out of the clouds.

Deep in Tenorio Volcano National Park, two clear rivers meet and the minerals in each react to turn the water a shade of sky blue that looks painted on. Locals say God rinsed his brushes here after painting the sky.

National Geographic called the Osa one of the most biologically intense places on Earth. You hike in with a naturalist and might see scarlet macaws, a Baird's tapir, and all four of Costa Rica's monkey species in a single day.

You climb nearly fourteen thousand feet to stand above the clouds as the sun drops into the Pacific. Then the sky fills in, and at one of the clearest viewing spots on Earth, the Milky Way arrives in detail you'll remember for years.

You ride along the sand with the Pacific on one side and the Ko'olau mountains on the other, past the beaches where the winter swells arrive. The pace is easy, the views enormous, and the whole thing feels like old Hawai'i.

Thousands of humpbacks arrive each winter from Alaska to breed and calve in the warm shallows between the islands. From a small boat you'll see breaches, tail slaps, and mothers moving slowly with their calves alongside.

You walk the rows with a farmer whose family has worked the same hillside for generations, pick ripe red cherries by hand, and follow the beans all the way to the cup in your hands.

Nicoya is one of the world's five Blue Zones, where people regularly live past one hundred. You spend an afternoon patting out corn tortillas over a wood fire and hearing how a local family thinks about a long, full life.

The rhythm shifts on the Caribbean side, where Afro-Caribbean families have shaped the culture since the railroad was built in the 1870s. Grind cacao with a Bribri family in the morning, then eat rondón, a coconut seafood stew, as calypso drifts from a nearby porch.

The evening wind fills the sails as the sky turns copper over the Pacific, and spotted dolphins ride the bow while the dry-forest hills glow behind you.

On a moonless night you paddle out across Paquera Bay, and every stroke sets the water glowing electric blue as tiny plankton light up around your kayak. Trail your fingers over the side and sparks scatter through the dark like a second sky, while the real stars fill the one above.