Part of our plan to slow down while traveling; and to do that we are trying to take some time once in a while in some destinations where there isn’t much to do. Traveling in cities can sometimes be hectic when it feels like we need to navigate a metro system every day to see a museum or tourist attraction. Beach towns are the ideal way to take a break from that. We had 6 nights in Playa Del Coco and then 7 nights in Samara that are both on the Guanacaste coast in Costa Rica. After this is another 5 days on the beach further south in Montezuma. Most people that know us will think we are going crazy with that much time to do nothing but sit on the beach and read. But we are doing just fine with all the downtime; it seems to be going pretty fast.
There are many beach towns to choose from in Costa Rica and it is hard to find our ideal spot in a country we have never been to before. We like smaller towns without too much tourism and traffic but the towns still enough walkable restaurants to give us some choices for the week. We have had great times in places like Yelapa, Mexico, Caye Caulker, Belize and Gili Air, Indonesia and our goal is to find similar vibes in Costa Rica. We are not resort people and want to stay away from any towns that have cruise ship dockings. Those kind of towns tend to be filled with too many souvenir shops, jewelry stores and overpriced restaurants. I think we succeeded in finding Playa Del Coco and Samara.
We took a 3 hour very curvy shuttle bus ride from the mountain to our first stop in Playa Del Coco. We were staying in a condo development filled with a bunch of Canadian snowbirds mixed in with other North Americans on shorter vacations. It was just a short walk to the beach but we ended up spending most of our days around the pool.
The ocean was about the same temp as the pool (86 degrees) and the waves were really calm because we were in a protected bay. While the town did have a lot of tourists, it also still have a working fishing industry. We saw a fishing boat come in one night and we watched them transfer their 2-day haul of Mahi Mahi from the beach to the trucks. They told me it was over 800kg of fish.
The town had a lot of noisy scooters, pickups and bicycles traveling on dirt roads with no sidewalks so it wasn’t the most pleasant 1/2 mile to town to go to the grocery stores or the more touristy restaurants. We found it more comfortable to walk to town on the beach most of the time although it did require a stream crossing that was a bit difficult at high tide. We didn’t do any tours or site seeing except walk on the beach and read. I was just fine with that.
The next week, another 2.5 hour shuttle bus ride to us to the beach town of Samara. This time our Airbnb was actually a small resort with cabins right on the beach. It was small and didn’t have a kitchen but it came with a free breakfast in the beach cafe every morning. It was a welcome change from my habit of eating 2 hard boiled eggs every morning that I had been doing throughout our fall trip in France and Spain.
Samara was quite a bit less “rustic” compared to Coco. We didn’t see as many barefoot, shirtless guys walking through the streets and there weren’t many local cafes (known as Sodas in Costa Rica). We were a block from town and could easily get to a the best restaurants on the road or on the beach. There were about 6 restaurants right on the beach and we able to get to the best ones during our week here.
The surf in Samara had some long waves on a flat beach that were great for beginning surfers during high tide. At low tide, the offshore reef stopped most of the bigger waves so it became a great swimming beach. Best of both worlds according to the time of day.
One day, we took a taxi to the next town/beach (Playa Carillo) and walked their long white sand beach. Not much to do after we got too hot in the sun so we had lunch and took a taxi home.
Although we didn’t do too much in Samara, I got a lot of really good photos. We didn’t really get that many sunset pics in France and Spain but we made up for it here. Every night, the whole town full of tourists would be on the beach at 5:30 to get their sundown pics. Sunrise was also pretty cool.
I saw a few new birds at the beaches, but most of them I had seen before in Belize and Mexican beaches. I probably won’t increase my life list much more until we get to Manual Antonio National Park in a few days. I am up to 149 species seen in Costa Rica with 102 of those being new for my life list. The overall life list stands at 471.
Next stop- Montezuma!!!