Trip Report :: Samara, Costa Rica

6 / 18 / 216 / 18 / 21

Last week, I shared a trip report for our first stop on our recent Costa Rican adventure: Manuel Antonio. Next up: Samara!

Samara was actually the first spot on our radar for this particular trip. Since, as I’ve mentioned already, we’d previously visited the Caribbean coast, we knew we wanted to explore the Pacific side this time. The Guanacaste region, which Samara is in, is the one of the most popular tourist destinations in Costa Rica. Although, most people end up in the northern part of the region, near Tamarindo.

Instead, we opted for Samara, which I’d heard about through a few Costa Rica expat Facebook groups of which I’m a member. Samara, which is near the southern tip of Guanacaste, is a much, much quieter beach town, known as an expat hub–and as a place with lots of young families. Playa Samara also boasts some of the most shallow surf in Guanacaste, making it good for the littles.

The drive from Manuel Antonio to Samara took about 5 hours, was easy, and provided some really beautiful scenery. We arrived in Samara in the early afternoon, heading straight for the house we’d rented through AirBnB.

When we planned our itinerary for Costa Rica, we imagined that the boys would struggle with moving around so much, and that we’d also need a break from the constant packing and unpacking. After all, the house in Samara was our 3rd stay in just 6 days. It was also, we thought, the most swanky of all our lodgings. So, we planned to stay for a full week, giving ourselves a bit of a reprieve. In the end, that ended up being a mistake, but I’ll say more about that later.

When we arrived, there were some issues with our AirBnB, which was the least favorite of all our lodgings in Costa Rica, as it turned out. So, we were all a little cranky, a little tired, and hungry. While the property manager was rectifying issues with our rental, we decided to head straight for the beach. We pulled along the cute, but small, main stretch of Playa Samara, parked on the side of the road, and wandered into a beachside cafe for pizza, salads, fresh juices, and a beach view.

Almost immediately, all the boys wanted to do was go play by the water. And who could blame them? They’d been in a car all day, it was hot as hell (over 100 the entire time we were there), and the surf was gorgeous.

Turns out, we spent almost every single day and night in Samara down on that same beach, often with only a handful of other people. Playa Samara is something special—one of my favorite beaches we’ve been to, and we’ve been to lots. While the waves can still get a bit rough, enough that the beach sustains a little surf school where you can watch kids and adults alike try again and again to stand up on their boards, low tide brings with it the most shallow, pool-like surf, which looks glass-like in the fading sun, and which is perfect for smaller children.

That shallow surf, plus a crescent of palm trees lining the beach, plus the copo (shaved ice) carts that wander up and down throughout the day, plus all of the small cafes that let you use their chairs and umbrellas if you purchase a drink, plus the occasional monkey, plus the wild horses grazing on grass that edges the sand, plus the complete and total absence of rows and rows of plastic resort beach chairs and loud, drunk tourists and hoards of people really makes Playa Samara special.

The little town of Samara is full of expats and locals alike. There’s plenty of restaurants to choose from, a couple of well-stocked grocery stores, organic juice bars, and ice cream shops, and side-of-the-road fruit stands. In a lot of ways, Samara feels like Tulum felt 10 years ago, and I hope it doesn’t end up like Tulum is now.

It felt like the kind of place where we could easily see ourselves settling, should we ever spend a year or two living in Costa Rica. Yet, for this particular vacation, with two boys who couldn’t yet surf or ride ATVs or safely swim in the waves, it didn’t quite warrant a full week. I think that, if we’d had a house that was more comfortable and air-conditioned (we can’t hang with the heat, what can I say?), we would have felt differently. I also think the boys were just a couple years too young to more fully enjoy the Samara area.

The beach is Samara’s main draw, and a wonderful beach it is. However, after having come from the adventure-packed rainforest of Manuel Antonio, Samara almost felt a little too sleepy for us, at least with Finn and Elias at their current ages. Every day was pretty much the same: wake up, grab pastries at Roots Bakery, head to the beach and set up show at Lo Que Hay, spend as many hours as we could stand the sun and heat, splashing in the waves and playing in the sand, come back to the house (which had no AC and was unbearably hot) for lunch by the pool, take naps, wake up, go back to the beach for dinner and sunset.

There was absolutely nothing to complain about, but the heat in Samara was relentless, and we knew we wouldn’t last a full 7 days in the sun. Plus, there was SO much we wanted to do in La Fortuna/Arenal, which was our last stop, that we realized we weren’t going to be able to fit it all in the in the 4 nights we’d planned there. It was an error made in the planning stage, we realized.

Nonetheless, we did our best to find little age-appropriate adventures, including visiting the gorgeous palm-tree covered park on the north end of town, doing drive-by visits of a couple other area beaches, spending a morning dolphin-watching (from a very small boat where pretty much all of us got seasick, but still), riding horses on the beach, eating some of our favorite meals in Costa Rica, and watching every sunset from the sand.

Everything came to a head though when, after several days of issues with our rental, one night we came home, after dark, the kids hungry and tired, and found that the gate to our property was broken. The property manager was an hour out at sea, and we were stuck in the middle of a pitch-black jungle with absolutely no way into our rental. Sona made the very bad decision to try and drive up a muddy hill, leading to the back of our property, and, long story short, she almost sent our rental car careening over the side of an embankment. It was literally held up by two slim palm trees. We panicked, got the kids out of the car as quickly as possible, and spent 2 hours, with the help of the nicest locals, unsuccessfully trying to get the car out safely.

The next morning, after a backhoe came at 6:15 AM to pull our car off of the ledge, we decided we’d go to the Macaw Recovery Network tour we’d long had booked, come back, pack our bags, and leave Samara two nights early, giving us more time in Arenal, which had much more to do, a more temperate climate, and AIR CONDITIONING, which everyone, even the boys, were missing. (Their bedroom was 80-85 most nights, and they had a hard time sleeping the entire time.)

So, while our time in Samara was slightly colored by a bad AirBnB experience, we still really loved the town, would still absolutely recommend it, and would come back–will hopefully come back–one day.

As we sat at Roots for one last breakfast before hitting the road for Arenal, the stray dog that Finn had befriended at the beginning of the week, and who’d somehow found us everywhere we went in town all week long, wandered up. At the same time, an expat family with a young son walked by, saying, “You should take her home. We love her, but we already have a dog.”

Of course, we couldn’t, but I sure got a little misty eyed imagining we lived the kind of life where we could just take that sweet, stray dog, jump in our beat-up beach car, and drive to our little Costa Rican beach home, where the floors are always sandy, swimsuits were perpetually drying on the patio, mango trees grow in the yard, and we live a much quieter, more family-centered life.

And as I write this post from our very comfortable, air-conditioned home in Chicago, the kids at school and Sona at work, there’s a big part of me that wishes we were all sweating together on that beach in Samara.

Our Samara faves and recommendations:

watch tide charts and make sure to hit up the beach at low tide
get drinks and guac and beach chairs at Lo Que Hay
eat as many copos as possible
but pipa fria and fresh OJ from the fruit cart in town (you’ll see the one)
splurge on a grilled feast at El Largarto
get pizza at the swanky Gusto beach cafe
eat as many meals as possible at Soda La Perla
sit in the porch swing chairs and eat sushi at Samara Sushi
take a horseback ride on the beach
visit the Macaw Recovery Network to learn about their conservation efforts
check out Playa Carillo
if your kids are old enough, take surf lessons at the surf shop on Playa Samara
get pastries and breakfast at Roots Bakery
if your group is old enough, take ATV or horseback rides to Playa Barrigona

Trip Report :: Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica

6 / 10 / 216 / 18 / 21

Sona and I first went to Costa Rica–Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean side–almost 10 years ago. We flew into San Jose, had a nearly 5 hour drive to our jungle abode in Puerto Viejo, and arrived after dark–hot, hungry, and suddenly unsure about staying in a cabin with no walls, no AC, and plenty of creepy, crawling things. I’m pretty sure I cried that first night.

A week later, we not only had settled into our first Costa Rica vacation, but we’d fallen so in love with the country that a seed had been planted: maybe, one day, we could live in a place like this.

That little seed settled, germinated, and grew. So, after a year of COVID and languishing and feeling so stuck I wanted to crawl out of my skin, it was no surprise that the first place we wanted to take the kids in a post-COVID (or, recovering, at least) world was Costa Rica. It’s the most freeing place we’d ever been, and we were craving freedom.

Wanting to explore the Pacific coast of the country, which seemed to be a much more popular spot for tourists, we settled on three locations over 2.5 weeks: Manuel Antonio (for the rainforest), Samara (for the ex-pat beach life), and Arenal (for the volcano and hot springs).

So, on the day of departure, we woke at 2AM, left our house by 3AM, had two flights and a long layover before landing in San Jose at around 1:30PM. We picked up our rental car (from Adobe, full insurance, for anyone looking to rent a vehicle during their stay), and embarked on the 3 hour drive to Manuel Antonio. The kids had barely napped, Finn got carsick and puked Oreos in the backseat, and, once again, we found ourselves arriving in less-than-stellar spirits. It didn’t help that we pulled into our rental villa after dark, which meant we couldn’t appreciate the view that we would wake to the next morning.

Our first stay was in Casa Camila, which is one of the properties of Alta Vista Vacation Rentals, which we found on AirBnB. I’ll be honest: it wasn’t our first choice. However, by the time we got around to finally booking, most of the MA homes we’d saved were already taken. Ironically, Casa Camila ended up being my and Sona’s favorite stay of the trip.

The house is small and quaint, but it has the modern luxuries (AC, washing machine, ample hot water) that make traveling a little more comfortable, especially with kiddos. The real winning feature was the pool, which overlooked the rainforest and the ocean, and was the perfect spot from which to watch the two nesting Scarlett macaws who made a tree directly in front of the property their home. In fact, of all of the places we stayed, our little bungalow in MA was the one where we most enjoyed just hanging out on property.

We spent our first day and a half in Manuel Antonio just settling in, hanging out by the pool, and letting the kids adjust to their new surroundings. We spent 5 days in MA, ultimately, which many would argue is too many, if you are the type who likes to have a new experience every single day, but since it was our first stop, it was nice to be able to transition slowly into vacation mode.

The kids are too small to take advantage of much of what MA has to offer, like strenuous hikes and zip lining galore and river rafting. However, we really came for the wildlife, and so we scheduled a guided tour of the Manuel Antonio National Park with Mike of Mike’s Nature Tours, and I can’t recommend him enough.

The tour is generally a 4-5 hour affair, including an hour-long stop at the beautiful beach that sits halfway through the MANP loop. Like most days in Costa Rica, the day we went was HOT and and humid, and the boys struggled a bit, both because they hadn’t fully adjusted to the heat and bugs (Elias got bitten by something the second we got to the park, and he was on edge for the rest of the time) and because most of the wildlife was best seen through a monocular, which didn’t always capture the interest of a 2 and 5 year old. Even though Mike pointed out a ton of wildlife that we’d never have seen without him (sloths, 3 kinds of monkeys, frogs, lizards, bats, birds, etc.), Elias and Finn were fading, and Sona and I ended up carrying them to the “rest stop,” which is a small cafe just before the beach.

Once they had some snacks, they rallied a bit, and by the time we hit the beach, they were all game for fun. The beach at MANP is GORGEOUS and remote and undeveloped in all of the best ways. Costa Rica isn’t known for its beaches, which CR enthusiasts will tell you, but I love their wildness. Although the water is a little too rough for the littles to swim in, we splashed and ran in the sand and chased iguanas and hermit crabs until Mike waved his hand, indicating it was time to move on with the tour.

The second half of the walk went a lot better, and the boys were motivated by the big surprise we had been baiting them with all morning. After we left MANP and grabbed some lunch, we checked into our second accommodation, which was a splurge that Sona and I had kept hidden from the boys for a few months: we were staying in a full-sized 747 jet that has been converted into a jungle home!

I’d be waiting for the moment when we pulled up to the jet for weeks, barely able to keep my mouth shut, and it did NOT disappoint. The 747, which we also booked through AirBnB, is on the property of the Costa Verde resort in MA, which is huge and well-groomed and boasts a few airplane abodes, as well as regular hotel rooms. The airplane was so well placed, though, that we felt like we were all alone, and we never saw more than one or two people at any of the pools on property.

The motto of the hotel is “more monkeys than people,” and they weren’t lying. Minutes after checking in, Finn went out on one of the balconies for some time in a hammock, and he was quite literally stormed by capuchins, who seemed to be dropping out of thin air, and who wanted to make clear that this was THEIR jungle, and we were just visitors. It scared little Finn to death, but is not one of our favorite memories of the trip.

The next day, which was our last in MA, we decided to find one of the secret beaches mostly only locals know about. Mike, our guide, recommended it, and it didn’t disappoint. Playa Biesanz is located off a jungle road, down a 10-minute jungle trail. It’s one of those places you wouldn’t know about unless someone told you, and that’s what made it so great. You’ll know you’re in the right spot when you see a few cars on the shoulder of the road and some local guys, who are make-shift parking attendants, asking for around $3 to watch your car. Just pay them. It’s honest work, and they are kind, and it’s less than you’d spend on a coffee in the States.

We spent a full half day at that beach, wading in the cool “sweet water” stream that comes down from the rainforest and trails into the ocean and drinking limonatas made by a local who has a very make-shift bar set up under the palm trees (you can also rent umbrellas and chairs from him for around $15).

Manuel Antonio is small, and many folks say there are better spots in Costa Rica to catch the rainforest. If we had to compare it to Puerto Viejo, which is also a beachfront town in the middle of the rainforest, I think we’d say we prefer the latter just slightly, but we were really charmed by MA, and it was a wonderful place to be welcomed into this trip. Sona and I make every attempt to steer clear of super touristy spots when traveling, and MA didn’t feel very touristy at all. Although, that might have been due to low numbers of travelers because of COVID. Nonetheless, we liked it a lot, and we would absolutely go back.

Our Manuel Antonio faves and recommendations:

rent a villa from Alta Vista Vacation Rentals, which feels more like a B&B–complete with hot breakfast every morning, cleaning service, and a concierge–than a true vacation rental
consider a night or two in one of the airplane abodes at Costa Verde and watch out for the capuchins
hire Mike from Mike’s Nature Tours for a guided tour of Manuel Antonio National Park (but make sure the kiddos have eaten plenty before going, as you aren’t allowed any snacks within the park)
eat at El Wagon Pizza, which has a great atmosphere for families and really, really good pizza
eat at Emilio’s Cafe–great breakfast and my favorite whole-fried fish of the entire trip
wander around the town of Quepos, and eat at one of the small sodas
take the kiddos to El Avion, a restaurant under the wings of a captured spy plane, with a great view and a cockpit they’ll love exploring (the food is good, not great, but worth a stop for the atmosphere)
absolutely stay somewhere with a view, as it’s one of the best features of MA