Where to Go in May: 14 Trips, from Marrakech and Crete to Iceland and Patagonia

MAY · WHERE TO GO · 14 TRIPS FROM MARRAKECH TO PATAGONIA

A May trip can land you in Luxor, where the average afternoon reaches 100.7°F and the whole month records no rain at all, or in El Calafate, where the same week averages 41.5°F and hands you 8 hours 58 minutes of daylight to work with. That is a 59-degree spread inside one month. Nobody books both, and that is exactly why May advice contradicts itself so often.

Some of the month’s seasons have already closed. Iceland’s aurora nights are done for the year at 18 hours 35 minutes of daylight on May 15, and Costa Rica’s dry-season logistics are gone with 15.4 rain days on the calendar. Others have not opened: the Aegean off Crete sits at 67.6°F, cool enough that a beach week there turns into a driving week with swims in it. Patagonia’s trekking summer is finished at 8h58 of light. Every May trip is a trade, and the trades are legible before you book.

Where is it warm and dry in May? Marrakech, Crete and the Algarve

Four of the fourteen trips sit on the dry side of the Mediterranean basin, and they share one number: under three rain days for the month. Marrakech records 1.7, the Algarve 2.7, Crete 2.8. Lisbon runs wetter at 4.2 days and 1.73 inches, so four days in five still stay dry.

What they do not share is a swimmable sea. Crete’s water averages 67.6°F, the Algarve’s 63.4°F, Lisbon’s 63.1°F. Book any of the three as five or six nights (est.) built on a rental car and one town base, with the swim as a bonus rather than the reason for going. Marrakech, three hours inland from the Atlantic, offers no sea at all.

Marrakech

82°F days, 54°F nights · 1.7 rain days · 13h49 of daylight on May 15 · $$

Marrakech in May is the last comfortable month for a trip made mostly of walking. Afternoons average 82.0°F, rain turns up on 1.7 days, and 0.67 inches falls across the whole month. Four nights (est.), about seven hours nonstop from the East Coast (est.), covers the souks, the Majorelle and Bahia gardens and one day out toward the Atlas valleys. By July that same itinerary becomes an early-morning sport.

The gap between afternoon and dawn is 28 degrees, and it decides your suitcase. Dinner on a terrace at 54°F wants a real sweater, and a pre-dawn start for the mountain day wants a jacket you will carry all afternoon. Travelers who pick Marrakech for heat are the ones caught out by the nights. A riad courtyard pool is a pleasure at 3pm and unused at 9pm.

Crete

78°F days, 61°F nights · 2.8 rain days · 14h05 of daylight on May 15 · sea 68°F · $$

Crete gives you the whole island working in May. Days average 78.1°F, only 2.8 of them see a tenth of an inch, and 14 hours 05 minutes of light on the 15th lets one day hold Knossos, a gorge walk and a late dinner in Chania. The sea is the holdout at 67.6°F, swimmable for the determined. Six nights (est.) split between the west and the Heraklion side is the shape that works, and with no US nonstop you should plan a European connection each way.

The Algarve

70°F days, 60°F nights · 2.7 rain days · sea 63°F · $

The Algarve is the lowest budget tier here and the emptiest coastline on it. Afternoons average 69.8°F with 1.05 inches over 2.7 days, and the ocean holds 63.4°F, which keeps the sand to walkers and to surfers in wetsuits. Five nights (est.), flying to Lisbon from the East Coast and driving south, covers the cliffs at Lagos, the boat caves and Tavira’s salt flats. Which beaches carry lifeguards, and from when, varies town by town, and the Algarve in May tracks that calendar.

Lisbon

69°F days, 58°F nights · 4.2 rain days · 14h21 of daylight on May 15 · $$

Lisbon’s argument for May is 69.3°F and the longest day in this Mediterranean group, 14 hours 21 minutes on the 15th. Hills that punish a July visitor are simply hills at 69 degrees, and a 9pm dinner still starts in daylight. Three or four nights (est.) is enough for Alfama, Belém and a Sintra day. The region-by-region version sits in Portugal in May, and the city hour by hour in Lisbon in May.

Is May too hot for Upper Egypt? The month it crosses 100°F

Upper Egypt turns May into a schedule question rather than a weather question. Luxor’s afternoons average 100.7°F, twelve degrees above Costa Rica, the next hottest line here. A temple day still fits, but it fits in two pieces.

The trade is a month with 0.00 inches of rain and 13 hours 27 minutes of daylight on the 15th. Nothing on a Nile itinerary gets rained off in May. Everything on it gets moved earlier.

Upper Egypt

101°F days, 70°F nights · 0.0 rain days · 13h27 of daylight on May 15 · $$

No other trip here comes close to those 100.7°F averages, and the nights only fall to 70.4°F, so nothing cools off overnight. Four nights (est.) between Luxor and Aswan, or the same span on a Nile boat, is the standard shape, reached through Cairo with a short domestic hop.

The rain figure is served without rounding. It reads 0.00 inches for the month and 0.0 days above a tenth of an inch. Very few places on earth hold that for thirty-one straight days, and it means your packing decisions are about shade, salt and water rather than about weather.

May stays playable for travelers who accept a split day: out by 6am for Karnak or the Valley of the Kings, back into shade by eleven, out again after 5pm for Luxor Temple under lights. Anyone traveling with small children, or anyone who wilts above 95°F, should take this same route in winter instead. The dawn balloon flight over the West Bank is the one part of the day that costs nothing in heat.

Where does the rainy season start in May? Costa Rica and the Yucatán

Three warm-water trips sit on the wet side of May, and the rain-day column says how wet: Costa Rica 15.4, Puerto Rico 10.5, the Yucatán 8.2. Inland Mexico City joins them at 8.8 days and 3.00 inches, so the pattern runs across the interior as well as the coasts.

Wet does not mean canceled. The sea is at its warmest here of anywhere on the page, 87.5°F off Guanacaste, 84.4°F off the Yucatán, 83.4°F off Puerto Rico, and the daily pattern gives mornings to the water and afternoons to the storm. One island’s version of the same month is dated week by week in Jamaica in May.

Costa Rica

89°F days, 75°F nights · 15.4 rain days · sea 88°F · $$

A Costa Rica trip in May trades dry-season certainty for volume: 9.64 inches across 15.4 days, against afternoons averaging 88.6°F. Half the month records measurable rain, and that is the figure to plan around, not the temperature. Allow a full week (est.) for Guanacaste plus Arenal or Monteverde, roughly three hours’ flying from Miami (est.).

Those 15.4 days are rarely 15.4 lost days. The pattern runs bright until early afternoon, then an hour or two of hard rain, then a rinsed evening. Put surf lessons, canopy walks and boat trips before noon, and save hot springs and the long lunch for after. Tracks that dried out in March turn soft again, so a high-clearance rental repays itself on the Nicoya and Monteverde roads.

The Yucatán

85°F days, 77°F nights · 8.2 rain days · sea 84°F · $$

The Yucatán keeps its heat and adds the rain: 84.6°F days, nights that stop at 77.2°F, 3.88 inches over 8.2 days. Five or six nights (est.), about four hours from New York (est.), still buys an 84.4°F sea, the cenotes inland from Tulum and Chichén Itzá before the coach parties. What May removes is the winter dryness, and what it leaves is a sticky evening, since 77-degree nights never let the air reset.

Puerto Rico

87°F days, 74°F nights · 10.5 rain days · sea 83°F · $$

On paper Puerto Rico reads wetter than the Yucatán, 10.5 days and 4.27 inches, and it pulls ahead in two ways that matter to a booking. The showers are shorter than the September variety, and no passport is involved, which puts a five-night beach week (est.) inside a four-hour flight from the East Coast (est.). Send the rain to El Yunque, where a forest trail in a downpour is the intended experience, and keep the west-coast beaches for the mornings.

Warm places in the US in May: Savannah, Charleston, Zion and Sedona

May is the month an American road trip stops depending on the forecast. Zion records 1.6 rain days, Sedona 1.5, Savannah 5.3 with 3.62 inches. The Southeast has its warmth before the August humidity, the Southwest has canyon walking before summer shuts it down, and Florida sits at the far end of that same curve, month by month, in our Florida calendar.

Savannah

85°F days, 63°F nights · 5.3 rain days · sea 77°F · $$

Savannah averages 84.7°F by day in May and 63.4°F at night, and those cool nights carry the whole case for going now. Three nights (est.) covers the squares, a Tybee Island beach day at a 76.5°F sea and a barbecue circuit. Charleston, two hours up the coast, runs a degree cooler at 83.6°F with 5.1 rain days, so choose between them on food and history rather than weather. By late June both cities hand you the humidity everyone warns about.

Zion

71°F days, 46°F nights · 1.6 rain days · 14h15 of daylight on May 15 · $$

May is the best walking month Zion has: 71.4°F highs, 0.66 inches of rain over 1.6 days, and 14 hours 15 minutes of daylight to spend on trail. Angels Landing and the Narrows both work at these temperatures, where July turns the canyon floor into an oven. Three nights (est.), flying to Las Vegas and driving two and a half hours (est.), is the efficient version. Nights drop to 45.9°F, so campers want a bag rated for the thirties; hikers want a layer for the shuttle stop at dawn.

Sedona

78°F days, 52°F nights · 1.5 rain days · 14h04 of daylight on May 15 · $$

Sedona is the driest line on the whole page, 1.5 rain days and 0.53 inches. It also runs about seven degrees warmer than Zion by day at 78.3°F and six warmer at night, so dinner outdoors needs no jacket here and does two hours north. Pairing the two into one trip costs most of a driving day (est. 5 to 6 hours) and a second airport at Phoenix or Las Vegas. Two nights (est.) for Cathedral Rock and the West Fork trail stands perfectly well on its own.

Is May a good time for Iceland, or too early?

Iceland in May is early, and the calendar decides which half of the trip works. Highs of 48.9°F and 11.0 rain days put it among the cooler, wetter options on this list, while 18 hours 35 minutes of daylight on the 15th put it in a category of one.

Iceland

49°F days, 38°F nights · 11.0 rain days · 18h35 of daylight on May 15 · $$$

That daylight figure changes the arithmetic of the whole trip. Five nights (est.), under six hours from New York (est.), holds two hikes and a waterfall stop in one day, with the drive back to Vík still in full light at 10pm. The 3.62 inches spread over 11.0 days is a gear problem rather than a planning problem, and the 45.2°F sea explains why every swim on the itinerary is geothermal.

What May does not include is the aurora, since the sky no longer goes dark, and the interior highland tracks, still shut while the melt runs off. Puffin colonies and ice-cave tours keep their own calendars, so check both before you book a day around them. Build the trip on the ring road and the peninsulas, and treat the middle of the country as a June-and-later matter.

Where is it autumn in May? Sydney, Cape Town and Patagonia

South of the equator May is autumn, and the daylight says it: 10 hours 25 minutes at Sydney, 10h21 at Buenos Aires, 8h58 in Patagonia. Cape Town belongs to the same group at 66.8°F and 5.3 rain days, with a 60.9°F sea that settles the beach question for you.

Sydney

66°F days, 54°F nights · 3.9 rain days · sea 70°F · $$$

Sydney’s autumn is the gentlest version of a southern trip: 65.6°F afternoons, 1.80 inches over 3.9 days, and a sea holding 69.6°F, warmer in fact than the Aegean off Crete the same week. The Bondi to Coogee walk wants precisely these temperatures. The obstacle is the flight, roughly fifteen hours from Los Angeles (est.), which is why ten nights or more (est.) makes the numbers work, ideally with a Blue Mountains or Hunter Valley leg attached.

Patagonia

42°F days, 34°F nights · 7.4 rain days · 8h58 of daylight on May 15 · $$

Patagonia in May is the shoulder of a shoulder. Highs average 41.5°F, nights touch 34.2°F, and the day is down to 8 hours 58 minutes, short enough to close out the long trekking itineraries. Perito Moreno still calves, refuges and several El Chaltén trails wind down for winter, and the trip shrinks to two or three nights (est.) of glacier days. Buenos Aires, at 63.1°F and 5.2 rain days, makes the better base for the same journey south.

Where to go in May: Marrakech, Crete or the Algarve

Start with the number you cannot negotiate. On heat tolerance these fourteen run from 100.7°F at Luxor to 41.5°F in Patagonia, and the middle of that range is crowded: Crete at 78.1, Sedona at 78.3, Mexico City at 77.1. Anyone who has been miserable above 90°F has just eliminated three trips.

On rain, three destinations clear three rain days for the entire month (Sedona 1.5, Zion 1.6, Marrakech 1.7) and two make no pretence about it (Costa Rica 15.4, Iceland 11.0). A traveler with one fixed week and no room to move should read that column before any other.

On flight time, a five-night trip only repays itself within about six hours of the US (est.): Savannah, Zion, Sedona, the Yucatán, Puerto Rico. Crete, Marrakech, the Algarve and Lisbon want six nights or more (est.) with a connection built in, and Sydney and Patagonia are ten-night decisions (est.). If the destination is fixed and the month is not, Portugal’s twelve-month comparison sits in the best-time guide.

Best places to travel in May: Lisbon, Upper Egypt or Costa Rica

Those columns flatten two things. A rain day counts any calendar day with a tenth of an inch, so Costa Rica’s tropical hour and an Icelandic grey afternoon score identically, and only one of them ends your plans. Most of these figures also come from a reanalysis grid rather than a weather station, which is fine for a monthly average and useless for a specific Tuesday. Savannah and Charleston are the exceptions, measured at airport stations. And Upper Egypt’s 0.00 inches is a genuine zero that still will not protect a trip from a sandstorm.

The last word

If your May week is already blocked out and the destination is still open, book Crete for six nights (est.) and give three of them to the west of the island: 78.1°F afternoons, 2.8 rain days, and a 67.6°F sea that argues for a rental car over a lounger. The fifteenth candidate never made the table. Kyoto sits at 72.7°F with 8.6 rain days in May, between the blossom crowds and the June rains, and it lost its slot on flight time alone (est. 13 hours from the West Coast). Its own month page carries the detail.

Sources & data for this guide

• Climate: 1991–2020 May normals per destination, computed from Open-Meteo / ECMWF ERA5 grid-cell reanalysis, which is a model archive and not a station record · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Savannah and Charleston: NOAA NCEI 1991–2020 monthly normals, stations USW00003822 and USW00013880 · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Sea surface temperatures: Open-Meteo Marine API, mean of daily maxima over 2015–2024 · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Daylight: sunrise-sunset.org, sunrise and sunset computed for May 15 at each destination · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Rain days count calendar days recording at least 0.10 inch. That is the weakest column here: a tropical downpour of forty minutes and an all-day drizzle both score one · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Flight durations and suggested night counts are our own estimates, marked (est.), not carrier schedules · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Budget tiers ($ to $$$) are relative May signals across these fourteen trips and not quotes. We hold no verified lodging or airfare data for this page and make no price claims · checked Sep 14, 2026
• The Algarve’s guarded-beach calendar is set municipality by municipality. We have not dated it here, and the regional guide follows it each season