92 Fun Facts About Costa Rica

Monteverde, one of Costa Rica's best-known ecotourism spots, protects which type of forest?

Cloud forest: Monteverde sits about 1,400 metres up on the continental divide, where trade winds push moist air into the mountains and keep the trees wrapped in mist.

What do runners carry in the annual relay marking Central American independence?

A torch: runners relay it through five countries, from Guatemala to Costa Rica, retracing the route of the courier who carried news of independence south in 1821.

What greeting-and-farewell phrase embodies the relaxed, positive outlook of Costa Ricans?

Pura Vida, literally 'pure life', works as hello, goodbye and 'all good'; the phrase is thought to have caught on from a foreign film comedy of the same name, released in 1956.

Which conical Costa Rican stratovolcano was very active until 2010?

Arenal Volcano had been quiet for centuries when it erupted without warning in July 1968, destroying nearby villages, and it then stayed active until 2010.

Costa Rica's national bird, a plain brown thrush, was chosen for a song that locals say heralds what?

The rainy season: the yigüirro, or clay-colored thrush, sings as the first rains arrive, which is why Costa Rica passed over its showier toucans and macaws to make it the national bird in 1977.

What is the official currency of Costa Rica?

The colón is divided into 100 céntimos, and its notes have nicknames: Costa Ricans call the red 1,000-colón bill 'un rojo' and the 5,000 a 'tucán', after the toucan it once carried.

Isla Nublar, a fictional island off Costa Rica's Pacific coast, is the setting of which film franchise?

Jurassic Park: Michael Crichton put his dinosaur park on Isla Nublar, off Costa Rica's Pacific coast, though on screen the island was played by Hawaii's Kauai and Oahu.

Which word for 'you' do Costa Ricans use even with close friends?

Usted is the main word for 'you' in Costa Rican Spanish: many speakers use it with close friends and even children, where most of the Spanish-speaking world keeps it for strangers and elders.

The seven stars on Costa Rica's coat of arms represent what?

Provinces: the arms carried five stars from 1848 until 1964, when two more were added because the country by then had seven provinces.

Which European explorer is credited with the first documented arrival in what is now Costa Rica, on his final voyage?

Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean shore on his fourth and final voyage and reported natives wearing gold jewellery, in one account the origin of the name 'rich coast'.

What is the highest point in Costa Rica?

Cerro Chirripó rises above 3,800 metres in the Talamanca range; ice covered it during the last ice age and left behind the lakes near its summit.

To mark the army's abolition, José Figueres struck a fortress wall with what?

Mallet: on 1 December 1948 Figueres symbolically broke a wall of the army's headquarters to mark the end of the military, and the 1949 constitution made the ban permanent.

Which Costa Rican island, about 550 km out in the Pacific, gives the country a maritime border with Ecuador?

Cocos Island is steeped in tales of buried pirate treasure; in 1897 Costa Rica even named a German treasure hunter, August Gissler, as its first governor.

What traditional Costa Rican dish of rice and beans fried together is often served for breakfast?

Gallo Pinto means 'spotted rooster', a name said to come from the speckled look of the beans against the rice; Costa Rica and Nicaragua both claim the dish as their own.

Which crop was Costa Rica's main export for most of the 19th century?

Coffee took off once a first cargo was shipped straight to Britain in 1843, and it dominated Costa Rica's exports for the rest of the 19th century.

Which Costa Rican won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating Central American peace agreements in the 1980s?

Oscar Arias Sánchez won the 1987 prize for the peace plan the region's presidents signed that August, and he used the prize money to set up the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress.

Costa Rica's temperatures barely change through the year, so what mainly decides how warm a place there is?

Its altitude: this close to the equator the seasons hardly move the thermometer, so the coastal lowlands average about 27 °C all year while the main highland towns sit near a spring-like 20 °C.

Which Costa Rican province covers most of the country's Pacific coastline?

Puntarenas runs along most of the Pacific coast; its port once sent most of the country's Europe-bound harvest the long way round, by Cape Horn.

Which musical instrument is one of Costa Rica's official national symbols?

The marimba was declared Costa Rica's national instrument in 1996 to help revive folk traditions; its ancestors are thought to have reached Central America with enslaved Africans.

The pre-Columbian Diquís culture of southern Costa Rica is best known for making what?

Stone spheres: more than 300 are known, and when banana-plantation workers uncovered them in the 1930s, some were blown open with dynamite in the hope of finding gold inside.

Costa Rica's dry season, which locals call verano, runs from December until which month?

April closes the dry 'verano', or summer; the rains that follow are called 'invierno', winter, and their months almost coincide with the Atlantic hurricane season.

Which city was Costa Rica's capital until 1823, when the seat of government moved to San José?

Cartago, founded in 1563, was the capital until its side lost a brief civil war in 1823 and the victors moved the seat of government to their own city.

As of 2023 Costa Rica got about 95% of its electricity from renewables; which source supplied the most?

Hydropower supplies most of Costa Rica's electricity, thanks to its many rivers and dams, while geothermal plants on the volcanoes, wind and solar add much of the rest.

Which Costa Rican goalkeeper won three straight Champions League titles with Real Madrid?

Keylor Navas joined Real Madrid after his saves carried Costa Rica to the 2014 World Cup quarter-finals, then won the Champions League there in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Which tree-dwelling mammal did Costa Rica's legislature declare a national symbol in 2021?

Sloth: lawmakers named both of the country's species, the two-toed and the three-toed, national symbols in July 2021 to help protect them and their habitat.

What does Costa Rica celebrate each 15 September?

Independence Day marks 15 September 1821, when Central America's leaders broke with colonial rule; Costa Rica then sat inside a regional federation and only went its own way in 1838.

Which Costa Rican province is known for its Pacific beaches, including the surf town of Tamarindo?

Guanacaste left Nicaragua to join Costa Rica after a plebiscite in the 1820s, an annexation the country still marks with a national holiday every 25 July.

Costa Rica is often cited as the first tropical country to stop and reverse what?

Deforestation: after decades of clearing, Costa Rica began paying landowners in 1996 to protect and replant trees, and its woodland has been growing back since.

Into which gulf does the Tempisque River of northwestern Costa Rica empty?

The Gulf of Nicoya receives the Tempisque beside Palo Verde National Park; since 2003 the river's estuary has been crossed by a bridge that Taiwan paid for and designed.

In the Boruca 'Dance of the Little Devils', whom do the devils fight?

Spanish conquistadors, played by a mock bull, are the enemy: the masked 'devils' stand for the Boruca themselves, and the three-day festival ends with the devils victorious.

Which Caribbean music style, played by Walter Ferguson, took root on Costa Rica's Atlantic coast?

Calypso reached the coast with West Indian workers; Walter Ferguson of Cahuita taped his songs at home and sold the cassettes to visitors who came looking for him, and he died in 2023 aged 103.

Which vehicle, a Costa Rican national symbol, is traditionally painted in bright patterns?

Oxcart: from the mid-1800s the carts, called carretas, hauled the harvest over the mountains to the Pacific coast, a trip of ten to fifteen days, and each region painted its wheels in its own pattern.

Which adventure activity became a Costa Rican tourism staple after biologists used it to study the rainforest canopy?

Zip-lining: in the 1970s wildlife biologists strung cables through Costa Rica's rainforest to explore the treetops without disturbing them, and canopy tours for visitors grew out of those lines.

Costa Rica's 1823 civil war, settled at Ochomogo, was over joining which larger state?

The Mexican Empire: the towns that backed joining Agustín de Iturbide's short-lived empire were beaten by republican militia at Ochomogo in 1823.

What do Costa Ricans colloquially call themselves?

Ticos is said to come from Costa Ricans' fondness for the diminutive ending '-tico', as in 'momentico' for a little moment, where most other countries say 'momentito'.

Costa Rica's national flower, the guaria morada, is what kind of plant?

An orchid: the guaria morada has been the national flower since 1939, and because it blooms around March its flowers traditionally decorate church altars through Lent and Holy Week.

Which Costa Rican province is known for its rich Afro-Caribbean culture and banana plantations?

Limón's Afro-Caribbean community descends from West Indian workers who built the Atlantic railway and worked the banana plantations; for decades, residence laws kept them on the Caribbean coast.

Ancient Costa Rica lay where two great culture areas overlapped: Mesoamerica to the north and which to the south?

The Andes: when the Spanish arrived, the country's northwest was the southern limit of Mesoamerican culture, while the centre and south were home to Chibchan-speaking peoples with South American ties.

Most Costa Ricans live in which upland region around the capital?

The Central Valley, a mild upland basin, holds well over half the population; the continental divide runs through it, so its rivers flow to both the Pacific and the Caribbean.

Roughly how large is Costa Rica?

About 51,000 km²: the country is so slim that, at its narrowest, only about 120 km of land separate the Pacific from the Caribbean.

Which long-tailed bird of Costa Rica's highlands was sacred to the ancient Maya and Aztecs?

The resplendent quetzal was the sacred bird of the ancient Maya and Aztecs, prized for its long blue-green tail plumes; it is also Guatemala's national emblem and the name of its currency.

Which highland region gives its name to one of Costa Rica's most prized coffees?

Tarrazú lives by its highland crop: so many pickers arrive for the harvest that the local population triples between December and February.

Which town is the usual base for visiting Costa Rica's cone-shaped volcano that erupted from 1968 to 2010?

La Fortuna was not named for escaping the 1968 eruption, as a popular story has it: the name is older and refers to its fertile land, though the eruption that spared it did make the town a tourist hub.

Costa Rica is famous for bananas, but of which other fruit has it become the world's largest exporter?

Pineapple: by the 2010s Costa Rica supplied more than half of the world's pineapple exports, and the fruit had become its second-biggest farm export after bananas.

Which Costa Rican national holiday commemorates the Battle of Rivas against William Walker's forces?

Santamaría was a drummer who died on 11 April 1856 carrying the torch that set the filibusters' stronghold ablaze; he was only idolised as a national hero decades later.

In what are Costa Rican Christmas tamales traditionally wrapped?

Plantain leaves, or banana leaves, wrap Costa Rican tamales, a dish said to have reached the region from the Aztecs and now served at almost every celebration, above all Christmas.

Which major river defines much of Costa Rica's northern border?

The San Juan River runs from Lake Nicaragua to the Caribbean; by treaty its waters belong to Nicaragua, with Costa Rica allowed only commercial navigation on parts of it, a recipe for repeated disputes.

Which religious group from Alabama founded the Monteverde settlement in 1951?

Quakers from Fairhope, Alabama, pacifists who had defied the US military draft, chose Costa Rica for its army-free constitution and a cool climate that suited dairy farming.

Which Monteverde amphibian, last seen in 1989, is the poster child of amphibian decline?

The golden toad lived only in about 4 km² of high ground above Monteverde; a lone male seen in May 1989 was the last, and the species was declared extinct in 2004.

Who was the first woman elected President of Costa Rica, taking office in 2010?

Laura Chinchilla, a former public security minister, won the February 2010 election with about 47% of the vote, more than 20 points clear of her nearest rival, so no run-off was needed.

Where did José Figueres Ferrer, who abolished the army in 1948, study engineering?

MIT is where Figueres studied hydroelectric engineering in the 1920s; he later said a history of the world by HG Wells, read as a student, convinced him that mankind's future could not include armed forces.

The National Theatre in San José opened in 1897 with a performance of which work drawn from Goethe?

Faust, in Gounod's operatic version, opened the National Theatre in October 1897; to fund the building, the government had decreed a levy on the country's chief export in 1890.

Tortuguero National Park, a sea-turtle nesting site, can be reached only by boat or what?

Tortuguero has no road access: visitors arrive by boat along the canals or by airplane to its airstrip; the park gets over 5,000 mm of rain a year and hosts nesting green turtles from July to October.

Corcovado National Park covers about a third of which Costa Rican peninsula?

Corcovado, created in 1975, covers about a third of the Osa Peninsula and protects the largest old-growth rainforest left on the Pacific coast of the Americas, home to the country's biggest scarlet macaw population.

Which small national park beside Quepos pairs beaches with capuchin and squirrel monkeys?

Manuel Antonio became a national park in 1972 after local people campaigned to stop development and keep its beaches open to all; it covers under 2,000 hectares of beach and rainforest.

Poás Volcano's Laguna Caliente crater lake is notable for being one of the world's most what?

Laguna Caliente is one of the most acidic lakes on Earth, with a pH that can approach zero; an eruption in 2017 closed the national park around it for nearly 17 months.

Which volcano began a two-year eruption in March 1963, days before President Kennedy visited Costa Rica?

Irazú rained ash on the central highlands from 1963 to 1965; the ash dammed a nearby river, which then flooded a city below the volcano and ruined crops.

Astronaut Franklin Chang-Díaz made all seven of his spaceflights aboard which spacecraft?

Space Shuttle: the Costa Rican-born Chang-Díaz flew seven shuttle missions from 1986 to 2002, tying the record for most spaceflights, and then founded a company that builds plasma rocket engines.

Costa Rica's first Olympic gold medal, won by Claudia Poll at Atlanta 1996, came in which sport?

Swimming: Claudia Poll won the 200 m freestyle, and as of 2024 all four of Costa Rica's Olympic medals have come from her and her sister Silvia in the pool.

Which colour do the San José football club Deportivo Saprissa play in?

Purple: Saprissa's nickname, El Monstruo Morado, dates from a 1987 derby, when a reporter wrote that the roaring sea of purple shirts in the stands felt like a thousand-headed monster.

Guayabo National Monument, a city abandoned around 1400 CE, sits on which volcano's slope?

Turrialba Volcano's southern slope holds Guayabo, a city of paved roads, mounds and three aqueducts that was abandoned around 1400 CE, a century before Europeans arrived, for reasons nobody has established.

In 2020 Costa Rica became the first Central American country to legalize what?

Same-sex marriage became legal on 26 May 2020: the Supreme Court had struck down the ban in 2018 and given lawmakers 18 months to act, and when they did not, the ban simply lapsed.

Which team eliminated Costa Rica on penalties in the 2014 World Cup quarter-final?

The Netherlands won 4–3 on penalties after a 0–0 draw: Louis van Gaal sent on substitute goalkeeper Tim Krul seconds before the shoot-out, and Krul saved two kicks.

Costa Rica topped a 2014 World Cup group with Uruguay, Italy and which other former champion?

Costa Rica topped Group D with wins over Uruguay (3–1) and Italy (1–0) and a goalless draw with England, finishing above three former world champions; Italy and England went out.

Costa Rica's first World Cup win, at Italy 1990, came 1–0 against which team?

Juan Cayasso's goal beat Scotland 1–0 in Genoa on 11 June 1990, Costa Rica's first World Cup match; under Bora Milutinović the debutants also beat Sweden 2–1 to reach the round of 16.

Which country beat Costa Rica 7–0 at the 2022 World Cup?

Spain beat Costa Rica 7–0 in Doha on 23 November 2022, the team's heaviest World Cup defeat; four days later Keysher Fuller's goal beat Japan 1–0.

Which country paid for Costa Rica's National Stadium, opened in San José in 2011?

China paid for the stadium after Costa Rica's president asked for one on a 2007 state visit there; Coldplay later launched a world tour there, citing the country's green credentials.

Costa Rica's flag is nearly identical, with the colours reversed, to which country's?

Thailand's flag has the same five stripes with a double-width centre, but red outside and blue in the middle; Costa Rica's red stripe was added in 1848 by first lady Pacífica Fernández, inspired by the French tricolour.

Which graduate university, created by the UN General Assembly in 1980, has its main campus in Costa Rica?

The University for Peace was created by the UN General Assembly in 1980 on the initiative of Costa Rica's president Rodrigo Carazo, in a country that had already given up its army.

Which Costa Rican river, famed for whitewater rafting, flows from Talamanca to the Caribbean?

The Pacuare runs from the Talamanca range through rainforest to the Caribbean; the state power company proposed a hydroelectric dam on it in 1986, and the plan was finally rejected in 2005.

Which ranchera legend, famed in Mexico, was actually born in Costa Rica in 1919?

Chavela Vargas left Costa Rica for Mexico as a teenager; alcohol drove her from the stage in the 1970s, but she returned in the 1990s to a celebrated comeback championed by film director Pedro Almodóvar.

Which Glee actor was born in Costa Rica?

Harry Shum Jr. was born on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast to immigrant parents, his mother from Hong Kong, and the family moved to San Francisco when he was six.

Carmen Lyra, Costa Rica's first prominent female writer, founded the country's first what?

Carmen Lyra founded the country's first Montessori school in 1926; in 1919 she had stirred a teachers' protest that burned the dictatorship's news office, then escaped the police disguised as a news seller.

La Amistad International Park is jointly managed by Costa Rica and which neighbour?

Panama shares the park, whose terrain is so rugged that it stayed largely unexplored: the first major scientific expeditions into its interior came only in the late 2000s.

Calderón Guardia, the president who founded Costa Rica's social security system in the 1940s, had trained as what?

A physician: Calderón Guardia studied medicine in Belgium and went on working as a surgeon for most of his life, even after leaving office.

Epsy Campbell Barr in 2018 became Latin America’s first Afro-descendant woman to hold what?

Epsy Campbell Barr took up the vice presidency under Carlos Alvarado in May 2018 and, for her first seven months, also served as Costa Rica's foreign minister.

Before becoming Costa Rica's first head of state, what had Juan Mora Fernández worked as?

A schoolteacher: Mora Fernández taught and served as a school principal before entering politics, and the land reform he later pushed through ended up creating a powerful class of planter barons.

How did President Juan Rafael Mora Porras, victor over William Walker, die in 1860?

Mora Porras, ousted in 1859, returned the next year to retake power, was defeated and was shot by firing squad on 30 September 1860; in 2010 the Legislative Assembly declared him a national hero.

Before becoming the National Museum in San José, what was the 1917 Bellavista building used as?

Army barracks: the Bellavista fort, built in 1917, saw fighting in the 1948 civil war; with the army gone it was handed to the National Museum, which moved in during 1950.

San Lucas Island, off Costa Rica's Pacific coast, served from 1873 to 1991 as what?

San Lucas was a feared penal colony founded by the dictator Tomás Guardia, who soon afterwards abolished the death penalty; the island became a national park in 2020.

Which 1963 reserve on a Pacific peninsula was Costa Rica's first major conservation project?

Cabo Blanco exists because two settlers, the Swede Nils Olof Wessberg and his Danish wife Karen Mogensen, campaigned to save the last natural forest in their region before it disappeared.

Railroad builder Minor Keith’s Costa Rican banana business was absorbed in 1899 into which firm?

Minor Keith merged his banana interests with the Boston Fruit Company in 1899 to form the United Fruit Company; he had been granted 800,000 acres of tax-free land for finishing the railway to the Caribbean.

What does the name of the volcano Rincón de la Vieja mean?

The Old Woman's Corner: in the local legend, princess Curabanda's father threw her lover, an enemy chief, into the crater, and she lived out her days on the volcano's slopes.

What does the name of the Costa Rican lunch plate casado literally mean?

Married: the name may come from diners asking to be fed like casados, married men, who ate such plates at home; another theory is that the rice and beans are 'married' because they always come together.

Which creature appears on the label of Imperial, the Costa Rican lager brewed since 1924?

An eagle: the label carries the imperial eagle of European heraldry, which is why Costa Ricans ask for the beer as an 'Águila' or 'Aguilita', a little eagle.

The Río Celeste turns turquoise only after what happens?

Two clear streams merge: one carries tiny mineral particles, and the sour water of the other makes them clump to just the size that scatters sunlight into turquoise.

Costa Rica's Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which runs every election, is often described as what within the state?

A fourth branch: created by the 1949 constitution, the tribunal was given the same rank and autonomy as the three branches of government by an amendment in 1975.

Which Virgin, nicknamed La Negrita, is Costa Rica's patron saint, honoured by a mass pilgrimage each 2 August?

The Virgen de los Ángeles is a tiny statuette that, by tradition, a villager named Juana Pereira found in 1635 and that twice reappeared where she had found it; pilgrims make a 22 km journey to its basilica.

Costa Rica topped which 'green' wellbeing ranking in both 2009 and 2012?

The Happy Planet Index, published by the New Economics Foundation, weighs life expectancy and reported wellbeing against ecological footprint; Costa Rica topped it in 2009, 2012 and again in 2016.

Most Afro-Costa Ricans descend from immigrants from which island who built the Caribbean railway?

Jamaica supplied most of the workforce: the first boat, the Lizzie, landed 123 railway workers in December 1872, and Italian and Chinese labourers also worked on the line.

What sparked Costa Rica's 1948 civil war?

An annulled election: when the legislature voided opposition candidate Otilio Ulate's victory, José Figueres led an uprising, won within 44 days, and his junta later handed power to Ulate.

Federico Tinoco's dictatorship in Costa Rica was refused recognition by which US president?

Woodrow Wilson refused to recognise Tinoco's regime even though it declared war on Germany in 1918; after protests and his brother's assassination, the general resigned in 1919 and went into exile.