Het weer in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca in januari

January in Bocas is wet on paper and often fine in practice. Our row counts 159.9mm across 19.1 precipitation days, and the forum's description of what that looks like is a hard 20-minute downpour that clears into heat and humidity, usually mid-to-late afternoon and once or twice overnight - with several reporting rain on only about a third of days, or a handful of wet nights in several weeks. They are equally honest that it cannot be predicted and has got less consistent over the years, so a January here is a coin toss between barely any rain and a genuinely wet fortnight. Snorkelling survives either way: the sea settles fast, and one sunny day is usually enough. The record: 27C days that feel like 31C, 22.9C nights and a 28C sea.

Puerto Viejo's forum consistently rates August as better than the genuinely wet June-July stretch on the Caribbean coast, with the back half of the month described as noticeably improving as September - reportedly the driest, sunniest month here - approaches. That framing is relative, though: some rain most days is still the norm this time of year, and posters were honest that Caribbean-side weather stays genuinely unpredictable regardless of the calendar. Hot and humid is the constant, with the real variable being how much of each day gets interrupted by a shower.

Forum posters describe February as genuinely variable here - some visitors get a good run of sunny days mixed with a few cloudy, showery ones, while others land mostly sunny and dry throughout their stay, with no reliable way to predict which in advance. Posters are consistent that the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, where Puerto Viejo sits, gets real rain year-round unlike the more clearly seasonal Pacific coast, with local experience suggesting roughly 65% of rain falls at night and most daytime rain is a short shower rather than an all-day event. Posters generally rate the destination higher for wildlife and rainforest activities than for guaranteed beach-lounging weather, given the real chance of a rainier-than-hoped stretch even in the relatively better dry season.