Atenas

Atenas sits at around seven hundred metres on the old road between the Central Valley and the Pacific, low enough to be warm and high enough to avoid the coastal heat, with temperatures that stay in a narrow band year round, and a National Geographic piece in the 1990s describing it as having the best climate in the world has been repeated by the town ever since and has drawn a substantial retirement population. Coffee is grown on the slopes and estates run tours and tastings. The old ox cart road, the route by which coffee was hauled to Puntarenas, passes through and is marked, and a museum in the town covers it. The weekly farmers' market, on Thursday afternoons and Friday mornings, is the local event.

Highlights

• The coffee slopes - the plantations around the town and their tours.
• The ox cart road - the historic coffee route and its museum.
• The farmers' market - the weekly feria in the town.
• The climate - the reason the place is known and the population it drew.

When to go

December to April in the dry season; the point of Atenas is that the weather varies little through the year. The coffee harvest runs November to February. Thursday afternoon or Friday morning for the farmers' market.

What to expect

The climate claim is a marketing repetition of a decades-old magazine line rather than a measured ranking. There is little to see in the town itself. Coffee tours need arranging. It is chiefly a place people live rather than visit.

Nearby

Alajuela lies northeast; the Pacific coast road runs southwest.

Key facts