Tamarindo

(This is mostly descriptive – skip if not interested ☺)

Tamarindo is a small town spread out along a main dirt road parallel to the ocean. The makai side of the road is planted with higher-end hotels and beach-front restaurants. The other side has surf shops, souvenirs, along with little eateries and smaller places to stay; it’s also the side that is undergoing most of the current construction, several new hotels and fancy condos. The main road is fairly narrow and with the added traffic from construction, it is a rough one to negotiate by car and on foot, especially during the rainy season when the dirt becomes slippery mud and the potholes become little ponds.
Once you step back onto the beach though, the real beauty of the area is really clear. The beach is wide at low tide and the view of Tamarindo, with its Spanish style roofs buried in all sorts of vegetation over a backdrop of lush hills, is really scenic. At sunset especially, the sun lights up the heavy clouds almost constantly present in the back and makes for colorful and fiery displays both in the sky and in its reflection on the thin film of water on the beach.



North of the town is a river (supposedly inhabited by crocs that we have not seen yet) which separates Playa Tamarindo from Playa Grande. Playa Grande, as suggested by the name, is even wider and much longer than Playa Tamarindo. It took us two hours each way to walk the length of Playa Grande. It is an important nesting ground for leatherback turtles, though they are only seen at nighttime. It’s also covered with seashells; which makes you wonder what the ocean bottom would look like in that bay if the water were actually clear. With the wave action right on the beach though and the very fine sand, there is no way to know…

The waves in Tamarindo Bay are all beach breaks; the waves are smaller in front of Tamarindo, not getting much bigger than shoulder-high… the spot we prefer is right by a rocky outcrop which causes the waves to break a little earlier and with better form… unfortunately, it is also the favorite spot of the “better surfers” here, the most dangerous… It is kind of interesting because coming from Hawaii, someone like me expects 95% of the people in the water to be better surfers, and you are also used to a certain surfing etiquette (i.e. you just don’t run into each other)… but here, it’s a completely different story, the majority of surfers in Tamarindo Bay are either very beginners or really not that good… and the “not that good” are really scary sometimes, not paying attention whatsoever to people around them, so it’s a good thing that the waves aren’t so big actually!! ☺ The really good thing though is that there are much fewer people in the water here so that balances things out somehow.