Hello worrellm!

Thanks so much for your detailed explanation of what you’re looking to get out of your trip. This really helps provide an idea of the type of places you’d like to visit.

I should start by saying that we have an amazing tool that’s set to launch on DIY Costa Rica this Sunday, August 1st that I think could really help you. It’s a destination-picker tool that we built to help travelers just like you: travelers who have a list of wants and needs but require assistance narrowing down the various destination options. The tool is an online questionnaire that has about 150 different criteria (everything from which activities you want to experience and any cultural interests you may have to the ecosystems you wish to explore and whether you want your destinations to be reachable by paved roads); you simply select whichever and however many criteria that apply to you/your family and the tool generates destinations (from a list of about 70 possible Costa Rica destinations) that match your specific criteria. My first recommendation to you would be to wait until this Sunday before you make any final decisions so you can use the tool for yourself (it will be free for you to use since you’re already a DIY Costa Rica member), but assuming you’d rather start planning things this week, I can provide some other, general thoughts below.

To begin, your idea to spread your time over 2-3 destinations max over the 10 days you’ll have in the country is great. We recommend the same in our blog post: https://costaricatravelblog.com/costa-rica-itinerary-10-days-in-costa-rica/ To be honest up front, the weather in August is tough to plan for because it’s unpredictable. August is technically part of Costa Rica’s low/wet/green season, but July and August do tend to receive nicer weather than the other low/wet/green season months (May, June, September, October, and November). This being said, we’ve just had an awful week of rain—way more than is typical for this time of year—and August could prove to be more of that. You may have heard that the Caribbean is the better option because it tends to receive nice weather in September/October while the rest of the country doesn’t. But this is only true if the rain stays away. August could end up being an extension of the rainy period we’re experiencing now in July, or it could end up being the start of a sunny September/October. It really could go either way. An alternative option would be to stick to the northern Pacific coast. It tends to be the warmest/driest/sunniest region in Costa Rica overall, so even though August is part of the low/wet/green season, if there’s going to be great weather anywhere in the country, statistically it would be found along the northern Pacific coast. That region of the country also manages to avoid a lot of the destruction that can result from heavy rains (i.e., floods, road closures, etc.), so if you did happen to get into rain during your trip, your itinerary would be less likely to severely affected by it if you were stationed along the northern Pacific coast as opposed to the Caribbean.

As for whether you should rent a car or not, this is a very popular question! Our related blog post on the subject may help you decide whether renting or relying on other forms of transportation (like private transportation) would be best for you/your family: https://costaricatravelblog.com/renting-a-car-in-costa-rica/

For selecting/narrowing down destinations, this will be easier with our destination-picker tool to come, but for now (and based on the rough information you’ve provided to date), my first reaction is to look at the La Fortuna/Arenal area (for activities and the rainforest); a beach town along the northern Pacific coast (such as Tamarindo, if you want a concentrated town you can walk around in that has lots of shops and restaurants, or someplace like Playa Flamingo or Playa Hermosa if you’d prefer a smaller beach community), and maybe some time spent in San Jose (which has great architecture/history and museums) or another town around the Central Valley such as Sarchi or Alajuela (which have lots of culture and plantations).

Pura vida! 🙂