Surfing in Costa Rica in March

Conditions in March

Water temp. : 29 °C
Wetsuit : Shorty or 2 mm

March is the tail of the dry season. The trades are still offshore in the mornings and the sky is still clear, but the north swell that carried January and February has faded and the south swell has not started. That is why March is the low point of the year, alongside April and November.

That leaves a coast doing exactly one thing well: small, clean, warm water at 29°C, and long empty mornings on the Nicoya beach breaks. It is a bad month for a surf trip built around swell and a good one for a trip built around getting in the water every day.

Learning in March

The best month of the year to learn, if you can pick. Nothing on this coast in March is going to hurt you and the wind cleans it up by seven.

Where a beginner goes in March

These spots are reachable all year. What the month changes is the size of the waves, not the access.

Tamarindo
TamarindoBeginner

For an experienced surfer

Surf : Good

Flat spells are real now. If the forecast is empty for your week, the southern Pacific holds a little more than Guanacaste.

How March compares

All twelve months, side by side

Where these figures come from

Air, rain and sunshine: WMO / NOAA 1991-2020 normals for Agadir Al Massira, a station some twenty kilometres inland and so a little warmer than the coast in summer. Swell, period and share of workable wind: Swell Archive and surf-forecast. Water temperature: seatemperature.org and weather-and-climate. Crowds and prices are an editorial judgement, not a measurement.