Alternatives to Costa Rica: where else gives you what it gives you

Work out which part of Costa Rica you actually want, because no single country gives you all of it.

People are drawn to Costa Rica for different reasons — wildlife, a gentle pace, rainforest, two coastlines, or simply the reputation for being easy. Each of those points somewhere different.

In short

• Want the wildlife? The Galápagos, inside our fifteen-day Ecuador route
• Want the gentle pace and a green, small country? Sri Lanka
• Want rainforest, culture and better food? Mexico
• Want a shorter trip? Costa Rica is eighteen days; the alternatives are twelve to fifteen
• All are land-only, all take a maximum of 12 travellers

Costa Rica's wildlife is dense, hidden and hard-won — you walk, you listen, and a good guide finds it. The Galápagos is the opposite, and that is its appeal.

Our fifteen-day Ecuador route gives the islands seven full days, land-based: giant tortoises, marine iguanas, sea lions on the beach and lava lizards on the rocks, all at arm's length and entirely unbothered by you.

Before the islands come five Andean days — Quito, the Quilotoa crater lake, Cotopaxi and the market town of Otavalo — which is the part travellers do not expect to enjoy as much as they do.

The trade: you lose the rainforest, and the Andean section is high, where Costa Rica is not. Two internal flights, to the islands and back.

See Ecuador for first-time South America travellers.

This is the closest match in feel, and the one people are most surprised by.

Like Costa Rica, Sri Lanka is small — short distances, no internal flights, and a route that never feels like a route march. Like Costa Rica, it is green, warm and full of things happening at the roadside.

Fifteen days take in the Dutch fort at Galle, an elephant safari at Udawalawe where the herds are close to certain, three nights in the cool hill country at Ella with the tea train and a night in a working tea factory, Kandy, the rock fortress at Sigiriya, the ancient cities, and three days by the sea at Trincomalee.

The trade: the wildlife is thinner than Costa Rica's — elephants yes, but not the density of a rainforest — and Sigiriya involves real climbing, which Costa Rica does not. See how physical is Sri Lanka and Costa Rica or Sri Lanka.

The least obvious answer and, for a certain traveller, the best one.

Mexico gives you jungle — Palenque, half-reclaimed by rainforest, and the waterfalls at Agua Azul — but wraps it in something Costa Rica does not have: three ancient civilisations, colonial cities, and the best food on this page by a distance.

Fifteen days from Mexico City through Puebla, Oaxaca (a cooking class in a family home, an alebrije workshop, mezcal at the source), Chiapas, Palenque and the Yucatán, finishing at Chichén Itzá.

The trade: far less wildlife, and the first days are at altitude — Mexico City is above 2,200 metres — where Costa Rica is low throughout. It is also the shortest flight from the UK of any of our Latin American trips.

See fifteen days in Mexico and our comparison of Costa Rica or Mexico.

Worth stating plainly, since this page exists to talk you out of it.

If what you want is wildlife you walk into, at low altitude, on a gentle route with no internal flights and a coast at the end, nothing on this page replaces it. Eighteen days, three forest types, two coastlines, a volcano, and the best-guided nature walking we sell.

The usual reasons people look elsewhere are length — eighteen days is a lot — and dates. On the second, our departures are guaranteed: a date that suits you runs whether or not anyone else books it, so there is no need to move country to find a trip that will go ahead.

If it is the length, look at Sri Lanka or Mexico at fifteen days, or Japan at twelve.

Eighteen days in Costa Rica sets the route out in full, and which Latin American country to visit first compares the region.