La Playa Grande

Vacations-Away

Pacific Coast (La Playa Grande)

Introduction Playa Basalito Playa Flamingo Entertainment

Playa Grande, located on the Nicoya Peninsula, Pacific Coast. The trip from San Jose was 278 km and took 5 1/2 hours.We rented a Toyota 4-Runner with 3 seats. The 6 of us with luggage stuffed ourselves in and took off up the main highway, Rte 1, toward Liberia. The speed limit reads 90 km/h on the open road and then 60 km/h in and around towns; however, speed is relative to the fleet of trucks you trail. The highway wound through mountains, became narrow at times, and skirted along shear jungle drop-off, but the surface was relatively smooth. We stopped in bustling Liberia for a late lunch. We overlooked a large town square. Many of the Costa Rican towns we visited were centered around a square that serves as a park, communication center, sports plaza and is fronted by a large Catholic church. As we departed Liberia and headed toward the coast, the road took on less substance and more absence. The potholes became larger than life and required very clever steerage of vehicles on opposite sides of the road. We approached vehicles coming at us where we were both on the wrong side of the road in order to avoid the worst of the potholes. We learned the fine point of trust and navigation making it back to our perspective side of the road in time to avoid a head-on collision (passing with smiles and waves - no one gets angry here).

Linda Vista, a vacation area tucked away in the jungle, just inland from the beach. Our host, Craig Pile, greeted us and presented us with the house keys. The house we rented was a gorgeous 2-story sturdy bungalow with beautiful native woods, many windows and an upper wrap-around deck that overlooked both the jungle mountains behind us and the crescent shaped beach to our front. We soon discovered the animal population surrounding the house. The howler monkeys sounded the alarm at 5:30 am. The parrots argued at 6:30am.

The National Marine Park (Parque Nacional Marino Las Baulas De Guanacaste) was down the road less than a mile from the house. At this point we were at the middle of the beach crescent which extended from Playa Tamarindo to the south and toward Playa Flamingo to the north. The beach was wonderfully isolated during the day with a few surfers, swimmers, boogie boarders, and bathers, and then traversed at night by huge leatherback sea turtles laying their eggs in the dunes. One has to sign up for the nightly turtle tours. Sign-ups begin at 4pm at the Parque station. Only 70 people are allowed to tour each night with guides; so, sign-up early.