Where to Go in March: 14 Trips, From Upper Egypt to Patagonia

MARCH · WHERE TO GO · 14 TRIPS COMPARED

A March trip can be built around 91.0°F afternoons in Guanacaste or around a 28.2°F dawn in Zion Canyon, and both leave on the same Saturday. That is a spread of nearly 63 degrees between two vacations booked in the same week, so the question in March is not whether it will be warm somewhere. It is which trip the season is currently paying for: the desert one, the European city one at off-season rates, or the last of the southern summer.

March 15 is the flat spot of the year. Daylight lands within five minutes of twelve hours in Luxor, Jaipur, Oaxaca, Zion and Charleston alike, so a trip anywhere in that band gets the same working day. What differs is what the calendar has already closed. Patagonia’s trekking summer is down to its final weeks at 55.1°F. Mediterranean swimming has not started at all, with the sea off Crete at 62.2°F and off Lisbon at 59.4°F. Kyoto’s blossom is the one date people plan a whole trip around, and it comes with 4.72 inches of rain, the wettest sky here.

Where is it hot and dry in March? Upper Egypt, Costa Rica and Rajasthan

Four trips here run on the same engine, the back half of a dry season at a hot latitude. Between them, Upper Egypt, Guanacaste, Jaipur and Oaxaca record 2.5 rain days across the whole of March. That is the entire weather risk of four vacations.

March is also the last month all four are comfortable at midday. Jaipur already averages 87.7°F by afternoon, and the direction of travel from here is up. Book any of these for April instead and you are buying a different, harder trip at the same price.

Upper Egypt

83.2°F days, 54.1°F nights · 0.0 rain days · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $$

Luxor’s March normal is 0.01 inches of rain for the entire month, and the count of days reaching a tenth of an inch is 0.0, not rounded down from something. A Nile itinerary booked now is the rare trip with no weather contingency to build: the only decision is Karnak at 7am or at 4pm. Five nights covers Luxor to Aswan, on a Cairo connection of about 1h20 (est.).

The gap between afternoon and dawn is 29 degrees, so the bag holds linen for the temples and a real jacket for the 5am balloon slot over the West Bank. March also sits at the tail of Egypt’s high season.

Costa Rica

91.0°F days, 73.3°F nights · 0.3 rain days · 84.0°F sea · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $$

Guanacaste hits its driest stretch of the year in March: 0.11 inches, 0.3 days above a tenth of an inch, and a sea holding 84.0°F. The nuance travelers get wrong is that those figures belong to one coast, not one country. They describe the Pacific northwest. The Caribbean side keeps its own rhythm and does not follow them. Seven nights split between a Papagayo base and Arenal is the usual shape, about 3h from Miami (est.).

Rajasthan

87.7°F days, 61.1°F nights · 0.7 rain days · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $$

Jaipur runs 87.7°F by afternoon and drops back to 61.1°F overnight, with 0.29 inches of rain in the whole month. A Golden Triangle circuit in March can still be walked rather than endured, and it is the last month of the cool season on that route. Ten nights is the realistic minimum for Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Udaipur. Late March is the tail of the cool season on that route, and the last of it before the heat.

Oaxaca

83.2°F days, 54.4°F nights · 1.5 rain days · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $$

Oaxaca matches Luxor’s 83.2°F afternoons and then falls to 54.4°F overnight, a swing of nearly 30 degrees that decides the whole packing list: one layer for the markets at noon, another for a courtyard dinner at nine. Rain is close to theoretical at 1.5 days and 0.58 inches. Four nights in the city plus a day for Monte Albán and Hierve el Agua covers it, on a one-stop flight of roughly 5h from Houston (est.).

Warm places in the US in March: Death Valley, Savannah and Charleston

The domestic March map is a straight trade between heat and rain. Death Valley delivers 82.6°F with 0.6 rain days. Savannah delivers 71.4°F with 3.50 inches. No US trip on this list gives you both, and all four are reachable on a long weekend without a passport.

Death Valley

82.6°F days, 57.1°F nights · 0.6 rain days · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $

March is the month this park can be walked. At an average high of 82.6°F, Golden Canyon and the Badwater salt flat are a morning’s outing rather than a medical calculation, and the same trails in July belong to sunrise only. Two nights out of Las Vegas is the standard shape, roughly 2h by car (est.). The constraint on a March booking is beds inside the park, not the sky.

Savannah

71.4°F days, 48.6°F nights · 5.0 rain days, 3.50 inches · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $$

Savannah hands you 71.4°F afternoons under the live oaks and then 3.50 inches of rain, second only to Kyoto’s 4.72. Spread across 5.0 days, that reads as two soaked afternoons in a three-night trip rather than a ruined week, so keep one indoor plan in reserve and book nothing outdoors that cannot move. The water off Tybee is 63.5°F, which makes the beach a walk.

Charleston

70.1°F days, 47.3°F nights · 5.2 rain days, 3.35 inches · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $$

Charleston runs 1.3 degrees cooler by day than Savannah, 1.3 cooler at night, and 0.15 inches drier over the month. Choosing between the two on weather is not a choice. Pick on the trip instead: Charleston for the peninsula’s restaurants and a boat out to Fort Sumter, Savannah for the squares. They sit about 2h apart by car (est.), and five nights takes both without hurrying either.

Zion

51.8°F days, 28.2°F nights · 4.8 rain days · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $$

The average March low here is 28.2°F, below freezing, and that is the average rather than the cold snap. Hikers who book on the strength of a 51.8°F afternoon meet frost on the tent at Watchman and ice on the shaded switchbacks. Add 1.95 inches over 4.8 days, enough to put the Narrows in question in any given week. Three nights in Springdale, about 2h30 by car from Las Vegas (est.), with a sleeping bag rated for winter.

Is March a good time to visit Kyoto? Cherry blossom timing and prices

Kyoto is the one trip on this list you book against a forecast rather than a normal. The blossom date is not a fixed calendar entry: it is announced a few weeks ahead each spring and moves with the winter that preceded it, which is why nobody, including us, should publish a date for it in advance.

What the normals do say is blunt. A Kyoto trip in March is the wettest booking here at 4.72 inches over 9.2 rain days, with afternoons of 54.1°F that put a coat in every photograph you take under the trees.

Kyoto

54.1°F days, 38.1°F nights · 9.2 rain days, 4.72 inches · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $$$

Nine days in thirty-one bring at least a tenth of an inch. Nights at 38.1°F make evening hanami a genuinely cold activity, and the 16-degree gap between day and night is smaller than in any desert here, so the layers you wear at noon are the layers you keep.

Set against Upper Egypt’s 0.01 inches, Kyoto’s March sky sits at the far end of the page by a factor in the hundreds. The reading is not to cancel. It is to build a seven-night stay with two or three covered afternoons already chosen, temple mornings early, and no single-day plan that depends on sun.

The trade is rates and crowds on one side, the blossom on the other. Travelers who can go in the second week get the same city and the same temples, with plum blossom rather than cherry. Anyone whose whole trip exists for the cherry books the last week and pays for it, umbrella included.

Where is it still summer in March? Cape Town and Patagonia

March is the southern hemisphere’s September. Cape Town is still running 76.2°F with 1.2 rain days, and Patagonia’s hiking season has weeks rather than months left in it, so these two trips reward booking early in the month and punish booking late.

Cape Town

76.2°F days, 61.6°F nights · 1.2 rain days · 63.8°F sea · about 12 hours 20 minutes of daylight on March 15 · $$$

Few American travelers put Cape Town in a March shortlist, and the numbers hold up better than the reputation: 0.48 inches of rain for the month, days at 76.2°F, harvest under way in Stellenbosch an hour out of town. The catch is the ocean at 63.8°F, cold enough that Camps Bay is a sunbathing beach and not a swimming one. Give it ten nights, on an overnight of about 15h from Newark (est.).

Patagonia

55.1°F days, 43.6°F nights · 7.4 rain days · about 12 hours 30 minutes of daylight on March 15 · $$$

El Calafate averages 55.1°F by day and 43.6°F at night, with 2.57 inches over 7.4 days and the wind the region is famous for. Daylight still runs about 12h31 on the 15th and shortens fast from there. Refugios and shuttle services along the Torres del Paine circuit wind down as the season ends, so a first-half-of-March booking gets the trekking summer and a late-March one gambles on both light and beds.

Is March too early for the Mediterranean? Lisbon, the Algarve and Crete

For sitting in a square, no. For swimming, yes, and the figures are not close: 59.4°F off Lisbon, 60.9°F off the Algarve, 62.2°F off Crete. What a March week on this coast buys is the city, the cliff path and the price. The regional split is laid out in Portugal in March.

Lisbon

61.9°F days, 51.3°F nights · 5.3 rain days · 59.4°F sea · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $

At 61.9°F, March gives you a city built on hills at exactly the temperature for climbing it, and that is the argument against July: the same Alfama walk, none of the heat, no line at the miradouro. Rain lands on 5.3 days out of thirty-one. Four nights covers the city plus a day in Sintra, roughly 7h nonstop from the East Coast (est.), and Lisbon in March takes it week by week.

The Algarve

62.9°F days, 53.8°F nights · 4.7 rain days · 60.9°F sea · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $

The Algarve is the driest of the three at 4.7 rain days and 2.14 inches, and the mildest at night at 53.8°F, a full 2.5 degrees above Lisbon. A week here in March is a walking and golf week: the Seven Hanging Valleys trail out of Carvoeiro, Lagos without a crowd, restaurant tables that need no booking. Beach service and lifeguard cover come later in the season, and the Algarve in March has the timing.

Crete

63.6°F days, 48.9°F nights · 5.6 rain days · 62.2°F sea · about 12 hours of daylight on March 15 · $

Crete is the warmest of the three by day at 63.6°F, the coldest at night at 48.9°F, and the wettest at 5.6 rain days. It is also the one where a good share of the beach-resort stock is still shut for the winter. A March trip is therefore Chania’s old harbor, the Heraklion museum, Knossos on an empty morning and the Lasithi plateau drive, based in a town rather than at a resort.

Where to travel in March by weather

The trap in March is not rain, it is the night. Zion averages 28.2°F after dark. Oaxaca drops to 54.4°F from 83.2°F, Death Valley to 57.1°F from 82.6°F. Three of the most attractive trips here get packed for on the strength of the first number alone, and a desert March punishes that mistake harder than a wet one does.

The second trap is the sea. Six destinations on this list sit on water that photographs as a beach and measures between 59.4°F and 63.8°F: Lisbon, the Algarve, Crete, Cape Town, Savannah at 63.5°F and Charleston at 62.9°F. If swimming is the point of the vacation, Costa Rica’s 84.0°F Pacific is the only one of the fourteen that delivers, and the Caribbean version sits in Jamaica in March.

The third is the calendar. Kyoto’s blossom week and the closing of Patagonia’s trekking season both shift by a fortnight from year to year, and both are the reason people fly at all. Book those two against the forecast, and keep the fixed trips, Upper Egypt, Rajasthan, the American Southeast, for whichever weeks your employer hands you.

Where to go in March: Upper Egypt, Costa Rica or Rajasthan

An average is a shape, not a promise. Kyoto’s 9.2 rain days do not arrive as nine evenly spaced damp mornings: a seven-night stay can catch four in a row or none. Savannah’s 3.50 inches fall on 5.0 days, so twenty-six days of that month are dry and the monthly total says less than it looks. And the grid-cell figures behind Zion and Patagonia smooth out canyon and valley, so the trailhead is colder than the number, while no climate normal measures the Patagonian wind at all. Year-round planning for Portugal sits in the best-time guide.

The last word

If March is the only month you can leave and the flight has to earn itself, book Upper Egypt. Zero rain days is not a brochure line, it is the thirty-year normal, and no other trip here takes weather out of the planning entirely. Take the 5am call for the balloon over the West Bank: the thermometer reads about 54°F when the burner fires and 83°F by the time you are back on the boat for a late breakfast, and that single morning is the whole case for March.

Sources & data for this guide

• Climate normals 1991-2020 computed per destination from the ECMWF ERA5 archive via Open-Meteo (grid-cell reanalysis, not station records) · checked Sep 14, 2026
• US figures from NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 monthly normals: Death Valley USC00042319, Savannah International USW00003822, Charleston International USW00013880 · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Sea surface temperatures: Open-Meteo Marine API, mean of daily maxima 2015-2024 · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Daylight on March 15: sunrise and sunset calculation, sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Rain days count calendar days recording at least 0.10 inch. Reanalysis cells smooth local extremes, so Zion, Patagonia and Crete should be read as regional values rather than as one trailhead or one beach · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Flight durations, drive times, suggested night counts and budget tiers ($ to $$$) are our own relative estimates, marked (est.), not quotes or timetables · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Kyoto’s blossom date appears in no climate normal and is forecast a few weeks ahead each spring, so we publish no date for it