Trip Report :: Samara, Costa Rica

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