Playa Flamingo, Guancaste, Costa Rica – 3 Day Trip

Arriving from La Fortuna we picked up my mate Anthony at the airport. This was the easiest drive of the trip, with nice paved roads, even a little wider than usual and limited potholes. It was recommended to me thru some friends to stay at Playa Flamingo if you’re going to be on the pacific coast. It was very nice but definitely more suited for families and retired people. Personally, I think if you want more of a Costa Rican experience I would stay in Playa Grande after visiting there for half a day.

Although this area does have authentic Costa Rican restaurants it has a few American-style ones for those that are not too adventurous. I will say this the beach was top-notch, the top 5 beaches I had visited.

If you’re interested in the COVID experience I had on this trip you can read that here.

At the time of writing this post CRC 100 = USD .16 (most tourist places list their prices in USD, even restaurants).

Day 1 – Arrival & Dinner 01.10.2021

We arrived with an hour left of sunlight, 17:00. Not much we can do other than check in to our Airbnb and take in the views before the sun goes down. You can see my Airbnb here and if you haven’t booked on Airbnb before, use my code to get $50 off your first stay. We then headed down the hill to the famous Margaritaville for drinks and dinner at 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar. Although I ended up eating here twice, both were just for sunset reasons I would pass on eating here, but happy hour drinks are great!

Day 2 – Private Beach Swim & Sunset 01.11.2021

Uncertain what we were going to do today we drove out of town to find more authentic Costa Rican restaurants and we went to The Shack in Potrero for breakfast. Heading back to Playa Flamingo we stopped at Super Massai Grocery to pick up some alcoholic drinks and Cuban Cigars (These were too pricy and wouldn’t do it again). After we got back to the Airbnb we went down to the private beach that is shared between three condominiums. Welcomed to nice soft sand and warm currents this was a great place to beach all day. During the day I had attempted to book surfing lessons for the next day and had no luck, companies didn’t return emails or answer my phone calls, which was strange since they are starving for tourism at the moment.

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Spending the entire day at the beach we showered up and headed back to Margaritaville to watch the sunset and take a time-lapse video on the beach, this is on my Youtube Channel. We had dinner at Camparino which had significantly better drinking prices than Maragaritiville and better food. 

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Day 3 – Surfing Lessons 01.12.2021

We woke up early and tried to make some more calls but didn’t get a hold of anyone so we decided to drive to Playa Grande. I put Playa Grande into Waze and ended up getting stuck in the middle of Playa Grande. Heading back we found a Surf Shop, Frijoles Locos. I did not see this surf shop on Trip Advisor or Google when I was looking for lessons, they are on there but for some reason, it didn’t pull up. We were fortunate enough to book a surf lesson at noon and even more fortunate we had a private lesson for the price of a group lesson, the cost was USD 55.

Since we booked our lessons at 10:00 we had a few hours to kill, so we went to Pots & Bowls, this place has amazing breakfast food and for reasonable prices, they’re priced in USD. After eating and sitting on Wi-Fi for two hours it was time for my third attempt at surfing. We went to Marino Las Baulas National Park which has another amazing beach with great break surfing waves for beginners.

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Last night out after we got back from a few hours of surfing we went out to Marie’s which turned out to have the best prices for Food and liquor in the area, if I came back (which I don’t plan to) I would eat here over the other restaurants.

Our flight tomorrow is in the afternoon, mostly an empty plane again, but cheap upgrades to first class. Looking forward to a relaxing morning overlooking the ocean before heading back to the cold and filled with a life with COVID restrictions.

Cheers!