Costa Rica Webcam Live
San José and the Braulio Carrillo mountains, Espadilla Beach at Manuel Antonio, and the Pacific coast at Tamarindo. Live 24/7.
Five webcams, from the capital to two coastlines
SkylineWebcams covers San José, the nearby San Vicente area and the Braulio Carrillo mountains; IPLiveCams shows Espadilla Beach at Manuel Antonio; Tamarindo Diria runs its own live beach and sunset cameras on the Pacific coast.
Costa Rica — the country that turned a barracks into a museum
On 1 December 1948, in the aftermath of a 44-day civil war that had killed roughly 2,000 people, victorious leader José Figueres Ferrer walked into the Bellavista Barracks in San José and swung a sledgehammer into its wall. "We will never again have an army," he declared. "The army will be replaced by schools." The following year's constitution made the decision permanent: Article 12 formally prohibits a standing military. The barracks itself became the National Museum of Costa Rica, and the funds once earmarked for weapons flowed instead into education and healthcare — a choice credited with the country's high literacy rate and life expectancy ever since.
That redirected national energy shows up just as clearly in the landscape. More than a quarter of Costa Rican territory sits under some form of environmental protection, an extraordinary figure for a country covering barely 0.03 percent of the Earth's landmass yet home to roughly 5 percent of its known biodiversity. From the Braulio Carrillo mountains outside San José to the beaches of Manuel Antonio and Tamarindo, that protected diversity is never far from view.
What the five cameras show
San José
SkylineWebcams · MoraviaPanoramic live view over San José, the capital, from the Moravia hills to the north.
Watch live →San Vicente
SkylineWebcams · MoraviaLive view of San Vicente, in the hills of Moravia overlooking the greater San José area.
Watch live →Braulio Carrillo
SkylineWebcams · HerediaPanoramic live view of the Heredia mountains and Braulio Carrillo National Park's emerald forests.
Watch live →Manuel Antonio
IPLiveCams · Arenas del MarLive view of Espadilla Beach from the Mirador Restaurant at Arenas del Mar, next to Manuel Antonio National Park.
Watch live →Tamarindo
Tamarindo Diria · Pacific CoastLive beach and sunset views of Tamarindo, a leading surf town on Costa Rica's Guanacaste coast.
Watch live →A short drive from Tamarindo's surf breaks, Las Baulas National Marine Park protects one of the most important nesting beaches in the eastern Pacific for the leatherback sea turtle, the largest turtle species on Earth. Females return each year to the same stretch of sand where they hatched decades earlier, a rhythm entirely unbothered by the surfers a few kilometres up the coast.
Costa Rica beyond the webcams
National Museum of Costa Rica: the former Bellavista Barracks in San José, where the army was formally abolished in 1948.
Manuel Antonio National Park: one of the country's smallest parks yet among its most visited, known for sloths, capuchin monkeys and easy accessibility.
Las Baulas National Marine Park: a leatherback turtle nesting sanctuary near Tamarindo, on the Guanacaste coast.
A country that once fought a bloody civil war chose, at the height of its victory, to dismantle the very institution that had just won it — then spent the following decades protecting a quarter of its own land instead: Costa Rica's defining decisions have run consistently against the instinct to hold onto power by force.
When to watch
Tamarindo, sunset: for the golden light over the Pacific that gives the resort's dedicated sunset camera its name.
Getting there: San José sits in the Central Valley; Manuel Antonio lies on the central Pacific coast, and Tamarindo further north in Guanacaste, Costa Rica.
Live cameras across France, Switzerland and beyond — Sports Infos.
All Webcams →