Costa Rica came late to golf: its first eighteen-hole championship course, Cariari, near San José, dates from 1973. Golf tourism grew with the tourist boom from the 1990s, and today the game is played mostly in Guanacaste, on the northern Pacific coast, where the Papagayo peninsula, Playa Conchal and Hacienda Pinilla lay out courses through dry forest facing the ocean. Further south, La Iguana at Los Sueños runs through rainforest about an hour and a half from the capital.
The season runs from December to April, when the Pacific coast is almost rainless and the Papagayo wind cools Guanacaste. From May to November, showers arrive in the afternoon, heaviest in September and October. Air France flies non-stop from Paris to San José; Guanacaste is then four to five hours by road, or a domestic flight away. Several major courses are reserved for guests of certain hotels, so we arrange tailor-made trips with the right bases, reserved tee times and private transfers.
