The dry season in Costa Rica is generally from mid-November through April and is the high season for tourism. The weather is warm and sunny, and not only do the tourists go to the beaches, this is also the time when the Costa Ricans who do not live near the beach, go to the beach. We are currently living in the Central Valley, which is not near a beach, so decided that it would be nice to go to the beach, as well. In January, before coronavirus, we opted for a long weekend at the end of February, in Tamarindo, a popular beach town on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. (Again, when we booked this, the coronavirus hadn’t blown up around the world, and when we took the vacation, it hadn’t yet reached Costa Rica. Sadly, Costa Rica now has over 500 cases of the virus, and the country has imposed restrictions, including prohibiting public gatherings, and has closed public beaches. More on that in another post.)
We really wanted a beachfront hotel since we don’t have a car and didn’t want the hassle of trying to figure out how to get to the beach, so we made reservations at the Tamarindo Diria Beach Resort, and splurged for an ocean-view room.
Shuttle to and from Tamarindo
As per usual, we needed to take advantage of a shuttle service to transport us from Escazú to Tamarindo. I searched online and found that Grayline had a shuttle that left early Friday morning for Tamarindo and would provide drop-off at our hotel. I tried to utilize on-line booking for our shuttle, and after entering all pertinent information including pick-up, drop-off, name, number of travelers, and credit card information, was rewarded with an error message. There was no getting around it after another attempt, so had to resort to making a phone call to schedule the shuttle.
Calling is always a bit risky, since my conversational Spanish still needs a lot of work. When I can manage to work through in my mind what I want to say, conjugating verbs, and putting the correct masculine/feminine articles with the nouns, it is a very slow process and I swear the other person can hear the gears working in my head. But if the other person manages to understand what I say and respond, they are always speaking quickly and using words that I don’t yet know, or if I should know them, I don’t recognize them. For that reason, when I called, the first words I spoke were, “habla usted inglés?” Fortunately, the response was yes. The conversation was a little choppy, but I managed to convey the request and provide a credit card number. This time I was rewarded with a confirmation and credit card receipts provided through the “WhatsApp” app, which we use often here in Costa Rica. It turns out that having the receipts was a good thing, because the Tuesday before we were scheduled to leave, I received a phone call from Steven at Greyline. I am not sure what did or didn’t transpire at the Grayline office, but this guy didn’t seem to have a record of the payment. I was able to send him the credit card receipts for both the to and from legs of the trip, through WhatsApp, which seemed to settle the whole thing. (And yes, I double-checked that the receipts did NOT contain the entire credit card number.)
Our pick-up on Friday morning was scheduled for 7:05 at the Wyndham Garden Inn (yet again. The shuttle services refuse to provide pick-up where we live.) We had to call an Uber to transport the two of us and our luggage to that hotel, which is about a three-minute car drive from our Escazú Village apartment complex. It takes longer to get our luggage in and out of the Uber car than it does to actually drive there, and the price is, of course, ridiculously cheap. Oh well, we are getting quite comfortable with the seating in the lobby of the Wyndham Garden Inn – we know where the bathrooms are, and this time John even took advantage of the hotel front desk to get change for tips.
Our van arrived at about 7:20. There was already another couple in the coveted row of seats just behind the driver. The guy from the couple was coughing, sneezing and blowing his nose. That certainly gave us pause, as we were going to be spending a lot of time together in close quarters for over four hours. They were speaking Spanish, but later the woman turned to us and introduced themselves. She is a retired teacher from New York City and she said her husband was a retired police officer. She was originally from Puerto Rico, as was her husband. They are now living in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. He never once spoke English and she always translated from English to Spanish for him. She never said, but we speculated that he retired from the police force in Puerto Rico and that this was a second marriage. They had arrived a few days before in San José and had thoroughly enjoyed a day-long tour that they had taken the day before. Now they were off to Tamarindo to enjoy the beach, staying at a casita that “her” son had found online.
(A lot of people mix up Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a country in Central America and Puerto Rico is an island that is a US territory. The US Embassy worked to get a Costa Rican band to march in the Rose Parade this year. Unfortunately, the TV announcers inaccurately announced that the band was from Puerto Rico, not Costa Rica. Apologies to the Costa Rican government followed.)
We actually saw this couple again during our stay, at our hotel! On Sunday afternoon we walked back from the beach and saw a couple that looked so much like them lying on beach chairs on the hotel grounds overlooking the beach. They had hotel wrist bands on. We commented on it to each other – was this that same couple? I am usually pretty good with faces and this sure looked like them, but they were staying somewhere else, so we shrugged it off. Monday morning that couple was at the hotel breakfast, and this time they noticed and approached us. Apparently, their casita had not been such a deal after all. She told us that it had made her husband uncomfortable (remember, he was a retired police officer, so it must have been bad.) Not sure if they took a cue from us about where to stay, but they had been taking more tours and enjoying laying out on the hotel beach chairs, except for when a mango fell on her chest and gave her a bruise.
We were the only four passengers in the van when we headed west to Tamarindo on Highway 1.
The drive to Tamarindo is over four hours. About halfway, we stopped, thankfully, for a bathroom/breakfast break at Mi Finca restaurant in Limonal, where Highways 1 and 18 join. We stopped here on the return trip, too. There are several restaurants and a gas station located at this junction, and we could see several vans and tourist buses stopping there. Our driver told us that we would be stopping for 30 minutes. That was apparently 30 minutes “Tico Time” as it really became more like an hour. Our bus driver wasn’t really in a hurry as he enjoyed his breakfast with fellow drivers who were also stopped there. Mi Finca means “my farm” in Spanish. The décor of Mi Finca was wood paneling with many landscape pictures hanging on the walls. In one room they had a wood carving of the head of Jesus hung high on the wall, complete with thorny crown, that had to be at least four feet tall.
The sign for the restaurant didn’t reflect anything related to a farm (or Jesus), but instead had pictures of macaws. As it turns out, this was relevant, as there were several macaws in a tree in a courtyard near the back of the restaurant. They provided a much needed diversion as we waited for our bus driver to decide his “30 minutes” was over.
We picked up another passenger at the restaurant and headed to Tamarindo. We were traveling on a two-lane road that wound through hilly areas, with consistent traffic. One slow vehicle slowed everyone down, and it was difficult to pass. At one point we followed a slow-moving, large truck that was making every turn we were. I have to admire our van drivers, as they do somehow manage to pass these other vehicles. When that happens, I am usually glad that I am not sitting in the row of seats directly behind the driver after all.
Hotel Tamarindo Diria
We were the first drop-off in Tamarindo, around noon. We checked in at the busy front desk, received wristbands, but our room wasn’t yet ready. We had planned for that – we brought flipflops in our backpacks and had sleeveless shirts. We checked our bags, changed into our flipflops and sat down at a table at the open-air restaurant overlooking the beach to have lunch. For some reason fish tacos always sound good when we go to the beach, so we ordered one plate of fish tacos and one plate of shrimp tacos. We also decided that since we were at the beach, we would order a beach drink – John got his favorite, a piña colada, and I had mine, a dirty monkey (or dirty banana, depending on the establishment).
After lunch we confirmed with the front desk that the room was ready. I also asked the usual questions – could we drink the water in the room? Yes. Could we flush toilet paper? No. I really do not understand why this information is not stated when you check in, nor supplied in a letter in your room at these hotels. From what we saw at this hotel, there were many American (and maybe Canadian) tourists. I may not be giving my fellow Americans enough credit, but how many of them are going to think to ask about flushing the toilet paper at a high-end resort, even if it is in another country.
We went to our room, on the second floor with a great view. We (mistakenly) thought that the front desk would notify the bellhops to deliver our luggage to our room, so went to walk on the beach.
Tamarindo Beach
The beach at Tamarindo stretches for about 1.5 miles and is very walkable. There are many restaurants and surf schools on the beach. We took advantage of a few of the restaurants but not the surf schools. We enjoy walking on the beach. It’s good exercise and the view is always wonderful. We estimate that with all of the beach walking we did Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday, we did a total of about 26 miles of walking. Mostly the beach is flat with smooth sand, but there is one end that has more “sinky” sand and our calves definitely felt that! (Or, our calves were “mooing” as John likes to say.)
Another thing we felt when we walked was the wind. We should have been suspicious when our weather app showed wind symbols for each day we were to be in Tamarindo. We get those symbols here sometimes, too, so didn’t think that much about it. After all, the highs were supposed to be in the low 90’s, and a breeze blowing in from the ocean sounded quite pleasant. Hah! What we got was sustained winds from 15 – 20 miles per hour. The end of the beach with the “sinky” sand was also where the wind picked up the sand and blew it straight into us, like we were being sand-blasted. One time when we were at that end of the beach a couple of women a little too happily said we would return looking 20 years younger (like we’d had dermabrasion, or maybe microdermabrasion would be more accurate, but either way, we were being forcefully pelted with sand and it hurt.) I did not see that we looked 20 years younger upon our return.
Tamarindo Hotel Room
Our second-floor hotel room was fairly standard but delivered on its ocean view with a balcony. It had a wall air conditioner that was turned on by the cleaning staff and kept the room sufficiently cool. The bathroom was adequate, and interestingly, had a small window high on the wall near the shower with a screen that was always open. There was, of course, a small wastebasket near the toilet for the toilet paper, and it wasn’t covered. Like other high-end hotels we’ve stayed at here, I just can’t figure out why they can’t provide a covered waste receptacle for the used toilet paper.
We soon noticed that there was a water leak around the toilet. (Hmm, would flushing toilet paper be a contributing factor?) We were willing to live with it, quite frankly, as it was more of a nuisance than anything else and it was clean water. We used the shower floor towel to dry up the water on the floor when we were in the bathroom and figured that we could make do for a few days dragging the towel across the floor with our feet as necessary. We did not report the leak.
The cleaning staff must have had a different opinion, however. Late Saturday afternoon as we were getting ready for dinner, or more specifically, as John was in the shower, there was a knock at our door. I opened it to find a man who didn’t speak a lot of English, trying to tell me that he was there to fix the toilet. I explained in my best Spanish that my husband was in the shower and that he couldn’t fix it now. The hotel room door opened out to an open-air hallway, where the man was standing. That high window in the bathroom also opened to that same hallway. You could hear the shower running from the hallway! Still he just looked at me after I explained in Spanish why now wasn’t a good time, so I repeated why not. I also said we were leaving for dinner soon. I guess he must have finally figured out I wasn’t going to let him in, so he said to call when we were gone. After we finished getting ready, we stopped by the front desk and told them if the guy wanted to fix the toilet while we were gone, that would be fine.
When we returned from dinner, the shower towel we had been using to mop up the water was balled up on the bathroom floor, very dirty and soaked through. We went down to the front desk to ask for anther towel. A short time later a woman knocked on the door, and we showed her the towel and explained that we wanted another one. She took the wet, dirty towel and told us she would be back in five minutes. She never came back. Was the toilet fixed? Well, it didn’t leak anymore, but now it ran, and we had to jiggle the handle a couple of times with every flush.
Hotel Room Balcony
Our hotel room had a balcony with a couple of chairs. The balcony had dividers between the rooms, but they did not provide full separation from the balconies on either side of us. So if we stood at the front of our balcony and looked right or left, we could clearly see the occupants of the adjoining balconies.
Although I mentioned that there were a lot of Americans at this hotel, the people in the adjoining rooms weren’t. There were two guys to the right of us, we thought sounded like they were French, and a man and woman to the left of us, that sounded Italian. Not only sounded Italian, like speaking loudly to each other in Italian, but the guy would sit out on the balcony in his white wife-beater t-shirt, in what we hoped were shorts (could have been boxers), smoking a cigar. We had been watching the entire “The Sopranos” series, and maybe we were influenced by that, but this guy definitely reminded us of Tony Soprano. I can’t say that The Sopranos hadn’t influenced our thinking in other ways, either. Before Spanish class one day, we somehow got on the topic of disposing of bodies, and I launched into a whole process including dismemberment and garbage bags. One of my classmates turned to me and said, “you’ve given this a lot of thought.” I simply replied that we had been watching The Sopranos, so that kind of thing was top of mind. I am not sure he was reassured.
Aside from sneaking peeks at Tony Soprano, sitting on the balcony provided us with ample entertainment watching activities below, like the Destination Wedding.
Destination Wedding
Taking a break from our beach walk on Saturday, we grabbed a light lunch at the hotel restaurant on Saturday. The restaurant is open air. We could see the hotel staff setting up multiple tables with tablecloths, and getting out glass plates, carefully wiping each one as they took it out from the box. The wind was clearly wreaking havoc, as tablecloths started blowing off the tables and the staff went chasing them down to put them back on.
The staff also strung lights from trees, and set up chairs on the lawn, with a center aisle and a platform in the front that looked onto the beach. The chairs were set up near where our hotel room was. Clearly this was all for a wedding.
Late Saturday afternoon, near sunset, from our hotel room we could see guests arriving for the wedding. As John was getting ready in the bathroom, and before/after I had talked with the toilet repair guy, I did partially see the bride make her way down the aisle. My view was blocked by the roof below us, so didn’t get a full view. The groom didn’t look young, and it was hard to tell how old the bride was. The exchanging of the vows was over in a short amount of time. By then we were ready to go out to dinner.
When we returned, the reception was in full swing, which we could see from our balcony. These people clearly loved to party, dancing up a storm. And not just the women, there were a few guys that really could dance, and enjoyed showing off their moves. We saw that the bride changed from her wedding dress to a short sequined dress and wore a backpack for the remainder of the evening, for whatever reason.
The next morning at breakfast, we happened to sit next to a table with members of this gregarious group. We recognized them from the night before, and then the bride walked in, complete with her backpack. It was still hard to tell how old she was.
Sunday night we decided to eat at the restaurant next door to the hotel. And, there they were were again, filling up several tables, laughing, drinking, etc. Seated at the table next to us in that restaurant were three sullen older teens, who mostly just looked at their phones. One of them ordered a whole lobster, which seemed kind of weird. We didn’t know that these three were with the destination wedding group, until the groom came over to talk to them. He didn’t flinch when the young lady told him she ordered lobster. Up until that point, these three had been ignored by the rest of the group. We realized that all may not have been perfect in paradise, speculating that this was a second marriage for the groom and that at least one of these kids was his from his previous marriage, and clearly was not having a good time. We left the restaurant and sat on our balcony. We saw the girl that ordered the lobster come back to the hotel alone and flop herself down on a covered beach chair, still looking at her phone. Eventually the other two came back as well, and the three of them just sat there together, looking at their phones, while the rest of the wedding guests continued to happily laugh and drink away next door.
Restaurant Experiences in Tamarindo
Our hotel price included breakfast, so we took advantage of that on Saturday and Sunday, eating a large breakfast from the buffet and then sharing a snack for lunch. The breakfast was pretty standard hotel fare here and included gallo pinto and sweet cooked plantains, in addition to eggs, sausage, omelet station, fruit, etc. Since we were spending most of our time on the beach, it was just easy to come back to the hotel, throw on a swimsuit coverup or shirt, and go down to the hotel restaurant for our late afternoon snack/lunch, as well. The lunch menu was adequate, and it was so convenient to be able to sit outside overlooking the beach and order not only food but a few afternoon cocktails, charging everything to the room.
For the most part we enjoy the open-air seating in restaurants here in Costa Rica. Surprisingly bugs weren’t a problem for us here. However, at the restaurant, which featured a very large tree in the center of the open-air seating, other animals appeared with some being problematic. There was a large iguana that stationed itself near the tables near the hedge separating the restaurant and the beach. Of course, people would come to take pictures and also give him food. No wonder he kept coming back. During breakfast one morning, we were seated next to the tree. A woman seated at the table next to us had a squirrel come down onto her table, tried to take her food, and refused to go away, no matter how much “shooing” she gave it. Most of the other patrons around her (helpfully?) took photos, which she happily requested from them after she coaxed the squirrel off her table with food. John had an unfortunate encounter with a bird when we got our lunch snack one afternoon, deciding it needed to relieve itself above him, hitting his arm. Birds were also a problem at breakfast when people left their tables to get drinks or more food from the buffet, leaving plates with food they still wanted to eat on the table. A few birds swooped in while the unwitting patrons were away and pecked at their plates. Other diners would alert them to what happened when they returned. As I said, we enjoy open-air seating in Costa Rican restaurants, but have learned never to leave a table with our food unattended, because you don’t know what could crawl, climb, or fly onto your table to steal your food.
The big draw for the restaurants at the beach is sunset. Friday we watched the sunset from the hotel restaurant ordering a drink but initially declining the waiter’s dinner menu. We were comfortable there, and after sunset decided maybe we would just order dinner from the menu after all. That was a lost cause. We did get menus but never a return from the waiter for our dinner order, or our drink check for that matter. After waiting a ridiculously long time, we left and even tried to talk to someone on the way out of the restaurant to settle the bill. We ended up with free drinks that afternoon. That night we cleaned up and located a pizza place more in town, that had been recommended to us. We enjoyed a great pizza, while watching a large American family obviously there on vacation, draping wet napkins over the feet of one of the teens who had too much sun.
Saturday night we reserved a table on the beach at sunset at a nearby restaurant, also recommended. The food was OK, and we were glad we had reservations, as people showed up later hoping for tables to watch the sunset. What was annoying was people who walked in from the beach, not eating at the restaurant and standing practically in the restaurant to watch the sunset, right in front of the tables, blocking the view, and taking group selfies.
There were groups of performers who traveled down the beach and performed for the restaurant patrons, looking for tips. The first group we encountered was a mariachi band that tried to get us to engage when we were at the hotel restaurant. I know that mariachi band members are talented performers so it probably kills them to have to move from one group of tourists to the next, playing the same two or three “expected” songs over and over each night. From our balcony we could see them move from our restaurant to the one next door. Later in the evening they returned to the hotel restaurant obviously looking for new tourists that hadn’t been there when they made their first rounds.
Another performer twirled fire batons. She was fun to watch, and probably because she was handling fire, didn’t come right to each table to perform. She just found a central (and safe) location for her routine. Afterward she came to the tables for tips. We were happy to oblige.
Sunday night when we went to the restaurant next to the hotel for dinner, they had their own entertainment (aside from the Destination Wedding party). At first it was a female singer with a back-up guitar player, and we enjoyed them quite a bit. She covered some songs and also had original music. After that there was a magician. He had a stage show, which was fine, but then went table to table swallowing and regurgitating glowing lights, from what we could tell. Luckily, we were in a table near the rear of the restaurant, and he never got to us before we paid our check and left.
Tamarindo Town/Shops
We didn’t explore too much in the town of Tamarindo. We walked a couple of the main streets when we went looking for the pizza restaurant and a few incidental items. There were a lot of restaurants, beach shops, tourist shops, etc. It felt much hotter in town than on the beach, since the temperature was the same both places, but there was little wind in town. I found a sun visor of the type I had been looking for to wear on my daily walks in Escazú, so that was a plus. We also bought croakies for our sunglasses so we would feel comfortable going into the water, as we had forgotten to bring them. (We did go into the water once, and my sunglasses did get knocked off by a wave. Fortunately, my croakie floated and I was able to retrieve my sunglasses, no problem.) Since we live in Costa Rica, we don’t feel the need to purchase t-shirts or other souvenirs, so these types of shops are not of interest to us.
And Finally …
It’s hard to beat sunsets on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. A little before sunset each night, people gather on the beach and in the restaurants to watch the sun go down. Each night we sat at tables overlooking the ocean, able to enjoy a cocktail and/or dinner, and not so secretly cursing people who blocked our view. All in all we were able to enjoy great weather and scenery every day and night.
We really enjoyed our trip to Tamarindo and are very glad that we decided to take the trip before the world changed. With the spread of the virus, beaches and hotels are now closed. This virus hit right at the peak of tourist season, so it no doubt has had a detrimental impact there, as well as other areas of the country that are so dependent on tourism. Here’s to a better future!
Remember, it's an adventure. 
You’re certainly having a better time than we are here in the states! Enjoy
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