#DARK CHOCOLATE TICO ICE CREAM FULL#

The closest town to our rental home was Esterillos Oeste, a super chill small town laid out on dirt roads right along the beach with a few restaurants, a small grocery store and a couple places offering surfboard and boogie board rentals. We spent a week on the Pacific Coast over Christmas at a beautiful home with mom and dad and Keith and Annie and enjoyed lots of pool and beach time and exploring a few nearby towns (Uvita and Manuel Antonio).

Surf is what Nosara is all about as it has such a consistent break, and what’s cool is that it’s for surfers of all levels! Oscar had a blast learning to surf with his new buddy Chico. Here are a few of our highlights from the week: Surf Lessons and Boogie-Boarding at Playa Guiones The whole area still feels off the beaten track and it’s all dirt roads, but nice hotels, excellent restaurants and holiday homes are popping up in many areas along the beach or in the hills just a bit farther away so I expect a lot is going to change in the coming years. It felt a world away from the more developed beach areas of Playa Guiones and Playa Pelada which are increasingly popular with foreign tourists. It was hot and humid, but when you wake up to howler monkeys almost every morning and the beach is a 5 minute walk away, what’s not to like?! The town of Nosara is actually located a few kilometers inland and is a typical Tico town which I appreciated as it seemed to retain its traditional feel.

#DARK CHOCOLATE TICO ICE CREAM FULL#

We spent a full week here in Nosara and fell in love with the area. One of the jungle paths to the beach And then you arrive here! There is no development on the beach so there are a few short paths that take you from the road to the beach. A long stretch of white sand beach backed by green foliage, with surfers bobbing in the water at all hours of the day. We finally arrived at our little casita in Nosara as close as you can get to Playa Guiones and felt like we were in heaven! The beach is definitely one of the most beautiful beaches we’ve seen in all of Costa Rica. We enjoyed traveling through beautiful rural areas and the Tico towns of Jicaral and Nicoya. Thankfully all went smoothly and we were pretty proud of our crossing river savviness. Palmer waded into the water to make sure it didn’t go above knee level before we attempted the crossing. I can’t imagine what the other route would have looked like! Just as it started raining, we arrived here. Well, it was still quite an adventure and took about 4 hours, and STILL we had to ford a few rivers.

We decided to take the longer and supposedly safer route back across the peninsula and then back again to the Pacific Coast. There is a coastal road, but you need 4-wheel drive (which we have) and even then, it’s really not advisable during rainy season (which it is now) as you would need to cross multiple rivers and the conditions really depend on the recent rainfall. You would think there would be a nice road along the coast, but no, this is remote Costa Rica folks. After our 4 night stay in Santa Teresa, we headed to Nosara, which is farther north up the coast on the Nicoya Peninsula.

Dark chocolate tico ice cream