Nosara, Costa Rica

Nosara doesn't have a centre. It has three beaches — Guiones, Pelada, Garza — connected by red dirt roads, and a development code that has kept the town low-rise for thirty years. There are no buildings taller than the tallest tree. There are no street lights on most of the roads. The howler monkeys are the alarm clock, and they don't observe daylight savings.

Playa Guiones is the surf break — a long beach break that works on almost any swell from any direction. It picks up south swells in the wet season, north in the dry season, and the wave count is high enough that the lineup never feels packed even when there are forty people in the water. The yoga scene predates the surf scene by about a decade: the Nosara Yoga Institute has been running teacher trainings since 1992, and the town has been a destination for serious practitioners for as long as anyone here remembers.

The dry season is December through April — bigger swells, offshore winds, and the sky is reliable. The green season is May through November, when the swells get more consistent and the crowds thin out. May and November are the consensus picks — the surf works, the crowds have gone, the prices drop. Worth knowing: the dirt roads turn to clay in the wet, and a four-wheel drive matters more than it looks like it should.