Været i Santa Teresa (Malpais) i mars

March is inside the driest and hottest stretch of the Costa Rican year, and our row's 19.7 precipitation days would say otherwise until you read the phrase regulars use: intermittent thunderstorms that do not produce much rain. That is 87.4mm spread across those days, under five millimetres each. Being socked in for days would be strange now; rain is always possible and rarely severe. What the dry season does bring is heat on the coast - 29.6C over a 25.4C night reads as 36C and 30C at 77 percent humidity, and with the Pacific at 29.9C there is nothing cool to get into. Their own figures, high 80s by day and mid 70s at night, match ours closely. The record: 11 hours of sun, a 12.4 kph wind and AQI 38.

Santa Teresa forum threads describe August as genuinely rainy country-wide, with the typical pattern being sunny mornings, a real chance of afternoon rain, and possibly wet overnight stretches too - posters called mid-August 'nice and wet' rather than a washout. The consistent advice was to front-load activities for the morning and treat the area as a place to slow down and relax in the afternoons. Multiple threads flagged that the heaviest rainy season here doesn't really start until the very end of August into September/October, when some restaurants and hotels close for the slow season, meaning earlier August still runs noticeably better than what follows it.

Forum posters place February and March inside Guanacaste/Nicoya's dry season - genuinely dry and dusty by Costa Rican standards, a sharp contrast to the wetter months later in the year. The typical pattern posters describe even in the dry season: sun and partly cloudy skies dominate, with any rain that does show up more likely arriving late afternoon or at night rather than disrupting daytime plans - the standard advice is to schedule surfing, beach time and outdoor activities for the morning and early afternoon regardless of month. Posters consistently name this Pacific Nicoya Peninsula stretch (Santa Teresa included) as one of the more reliably dry corners of Costa Rica during the dry season months.