A Week at Playa Hermosa

The best thing to do at the beach is simply hang out and wait for one of the spectactular sunsets. And with only a week, that's basically what we did. If you need a bit of adventure, there are many small operators who will gladly take you on practically any excursion you might wish: diving, snorkelling, fishing, to the volcanoes, on a canopy tour, or even--ugh!--shopping.

Quick Tips:

Leave the frantic pace of your everyday life behind and just relax, relax, relax. Grab a coconut or a cup of ceviche from a beach vendor and just chill in the heat.

Best Way To Get Around:

If you actually want to "get around", i.e. get out of Playa Hermosa, you'll either need to rent a car or be prepared to rely on the local tourismo taxis. To enjoy the beach, all you need are your feet.

Another hotel we checked out was Hotel Playa Hermosa (don't confuse it with Playa Hermosa Inn B&B). Apparently under new (American) ownership, the hotel is being upgraded, but for the moment, it offers good value. If we return to Playa Hermosa, we would likely stay here. The hotel fronts on the beach (yeah!) and has the widest beachfront in the village. The hotel consists of about 20 rooms (some with air-conditioning, some with ceiling fans) in two small strips. The rooms are small but tidy and clean--fine for sleeping. The restaurant was average--on par with, but cheaper than, the one at El Velero. The staff was friendly, if not as fluent in English as elsewhere--but that actually is appealing.

Owned by an expat Canadian, El Velero is a small, homey, hacienda-style hotel that fronts right on the beach. The rooms, about 20 in all, are air-conditioned, very clean, and spacious, with vaulted ceilings (at least on the second floor, where we were) and safes in each room. Staff was almost uniformly helpful, very friendly and spoke good English. The grounds are small but well kept, and there is a small pool--mainly used by families with small children--next to the restaurant.

Try not to get a room at the back of the hotel, or at least bring earplugs if you value a good night's rest, as the partying at El Pescado Loco across the street can get raucous.

If you were foolish enough to bring American dollars with you (as we were), the hotel will happily exchange them for colones at a not-too-bad rate.

We checked out several of the other local hotels at Playa Hermosa. Villa del Sueno is a step up in price, size, comfort, style, and pretense from Hotel El Velero, but also a step back. As it’s not on the beach, there’s a short walk down the road and across another property to get to the sand (a definite drawback for us).

With remarkably spacious, well-groomed grounds and two pools, Villa del Sueno has a wide variety of cheerful rooms, from tidy and perfectly acceptable "standard" rooms ($80 peak season) to two-bedroom apartments with kitchens ($290--but who wants to cook on their vacation?).

The owner, who took us around on part of our tour of the hotel, is clearly working hard at making Villa del Sueno a cut above most of the other tourist accommodations found in Playa Hermosa, and goes that little bit further to make his guests comfortable. The fact that it’s off the beach means you really feel that you are in a place separate from the rest of the world. Aside from the staff, you'll never run into any of the locals during your stay. And for those wanting more luxury than El Velero, it beats the run-of-the-mill Villa Sol (an all-inclusive) at the other end of town.

Definitely in the budget category is Playa Hermosa Inn Bed-and-Breakfast. (Not to be confused with the somewhat more expensive Hotel Playa Hermosa, reached via the first entrance to the village.)

This small inn is right on the beach and has eight rooms. The one we were shown opened onto the terrace where breakfast--included, of course--is served. The room was clean but run-down. The bathroom needed some repairs, the refrigerator in the kitchen was showing its age, and I'm not sure the air-conditioner stuck in the window actually worked. However, if all you're looking for is a place to flop for the night, you could do worse. And you can watch the beach from the terrace while you have breakfast and plan your day.

The grounds are larger than those at El Velero, but they are not very well-kept. There is a small pool, but it looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a while. The place is not as enticing as the pictures on its website would have you believe.

The staff member who showed us the room was friendly but shy about her lack of English. The owners also run the Aqua Sport store, restaurant, and fishing and snorkelling outfitters farther along the beach.

Things are clearly changing at Playa Hermosa with the arrival of this fusion-inspired, post-modern-designed restaurant, cantilevered in the hills on the main road to the village. Ginger seems very popular with some of the more trendy of the ex-pat community.

The menu is diverse, with primarily Asian and Mediterranean influences. Don't look for local grub here! The menu consists of a range of small plates designed for sharing. Dinner for two would consist of three or four different plates to build a meal. We tried the spring rolls, shrimp/mango salad, spicy frites, and seared tuna salad. All were very good. Unfortunately, they were out of the Pavlova by the time it came to order dessert. Our total bill for two came to $40, including wine and chocolate cake for dessert.

The restaurant at Hotel El Velero is not the cheapest nor the best in Playa Hermosa. The food is acceptable, if unremarkable, but the prices are high, compared to other resto bars along the beach (off the beach is another matter).

And if you avoid the tourist-oriented joints and try one of the local-run establishments, you can get similar fare for half the price. Pretty much every eatery has the same basic menu: chicken, pork, beef, or fish with rice and beans. Oddly, almost every dish everywhere also seems to come with french fries. (All hail McCain's!)

As you'd hope at a seaside restaurant, the El Velero fish is very fresh. One afternoon, one of the expat fishers was exclaiming about his catches for the day, and that evening, they were on the restaurant menu! Typical seafood appearing on the menu were red snapper, tuna, mahimahi (which seems to be used as a catch-all term for any sort of white fish), wahoo, and lobster. Their fish ceviche was very pleasant. For those afraid of taking a chance on fish, fries, rice, and beans, there are North American standards such as grilled cheese sandwiches and hamburgers.

El Velero's claims to fame are its twice-weekly barbecue nights on Wednesdays and Saturdays. You get the same food for the same price as any other night, except you can watch it being barbecued on the outdoor grill. Yes, it does taste better.

Aside from the guests, the crowd that tends to hang out at the resto bars are slightly down-at-the-heel North American expats. If you'd prefer a more tony bunch of expats, visit Ginger restaurant up the road.

If you're looking for an upscale dining experience, there seem to be only three places to go in Playa Hermosa: Ginger, La Finisterra, and Villa del Sueno. We decided not to try hiking in the dark up the rather treacherous-looking hill that leads up to La Finisterra and had our last night's splurge at Villa del Sueno.

Upon arrival, we were immediately asked whether we had reservations--the only time we were ever asked that in Playa Hermosa, and it pretty much sets the tone for the place. The restaurant was the best (real French service!) and the most expensive we visited. The menu was varied, but it pretty much all fit into the French-continental mold: shrimp cocktails, coq au vin, filet mignon... a kind of 1960s ideal of fine dining. No fish and rice here! The wine list was short, but the wonder was that they actually had one.

We both ordered the filet mignon. Made with local Brahman beef, it was extremely tender and tasty.

Desserts included items such as chocolate cake and profiteroles. The profiteroles were pleasant but disappointingly filled with ice cream instead of custard, with even more ice cream on the side. The owner conceded that it wasn't very authentic, but he said that American tourists love lots of ice cream.

For entertainment, the Quebecois owner performs with his band a couple of nights a week. The staff was very attentive, if a bit nervous about keeping up the high tone.

With only a week in Costa Rica, we didn't want to spend a lot of time running around here and there--we were there to relax. We alotted ourselves one expedition. We narrowed it down to either hiking Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja, with its volcano and hot landscape, or a gentle river tour of Parque Nacional Palo Verde for wildlife.

We left it until near the end of our visit and were unable to get a booking for the volcano, so it was the riverboat tour of Palo Verde for us. Finding an operator is not difficult. Your hotel can make arrangements, you can check out the places that have sandwich boards on the beach, or you can wait to be accosted by an enterprising local. We used the second option.

We were, happily, an extremely small group: three Canadian tourists (myself, my boyfriend, and another Canuck who was staying in Coco), along with our guide and his young daughter. Roberto picked us up in his van, and we hit the road at about 8:30am.

The drive east to Palo Verde took about an hour and a half, including a tour through the streets of Filadelfia and, partly alerted by other travellers, along side roads to catch sight of various birds. Roberto, as befits a tour guide, was pleasant and chatty and full of information. His English from time to time failed him (what's the difference between a wharf, a dock, and a pier?), but between us we figured everything out. As well as informing us about flora and fauna along the way, he was able to fill us in on some of the depressing details about farming in Costa Rica, such as farm crews rotating melons grown in bleak, plastic-covered rows so the fruit would have that perfect, evenly coloured look desired by North American consumers. Working in the gringo tourist industry was definitely preferable to working the fields.

Reaching Rio Tempisque, we boarded one of the waiting riverboats. Along the river, we saw (and heard) howler monkeys (also audible and visible in Hermosa itself), iguanas, excited capuchin monkeys eager for a free banana lunch, and alligators, also eager for other lunches.

But this is definitely a birder's trip: vultures, ibises, anhingas, kingfishers, spoonbills, egrets, several kinds of herons and, most excitingly, a laughing falcon which had just caught a snake for dinner. The meager 3x-zoom on my digital camera was not up to the task of getting good shots.

We were caught off-guard when Roberto asked us to tip the boat operator (we had nothing but pocket change).

On the way back, we stopped at a pleasant restaurant in Ortega clearly set up for the tourist trade for an excellent (included) lunch of mixed grilled meats and, yes, rice and beans. Then there was a penultimate stop in Playa del Coco to drop off our other Canuck, check out the town, and find a post office to mail our postcards.

Playa Hermosa is a tiny beachside village in the Guancaste province less than half an hour west from the airport at Liberia. Playa Hermosa appears to have no reason to exist other than its beach. Just off the main road on the way to Playa Panama, it has no post office, no banks, and no ATMs. (You'll need to get to nearby Playa del Coco for those.) There are two small general stores for the necessities. What it has is a long, wide, clean beach with warm, clear water; stunning sunsets; and no crowds.

The village is bisected by a small stream that has no bridge, so if you are driving, pay attention to whether you want the first or the second entrance to get to your particular destination. A very brief wade through very shallow water gets you from one side of the village to the other via the beach.

We were there at the end of November, and the weather was almost always hot and sunny. We had one brief afternoon rainstorm that lasted about 1 hour. The climate is dry, so the heat never felt oppressive, and the evenings were very pleasantly warm. The sand can get very hot in the afternoon, so bring those flip-flops to get to the water.

Playa Hermosa is a getaway spot for both Ticos and tourists, with many local families coming in to enjoy the beach on the weekends. All the tourist-oriented businesses we visited were owned by either Canadians or Americans.

Tourist development is starting to catch up with this sleepy, idyllically neglected spot. Many gated condo properties are being built in the hills along the main road; the all-inclusive Villa Sol resort development sprawls in the hills off the beach in the east end; the luxury Four Seasons resort can been seen across the bay; and an expensive private condo is slated for the last empty property on the beach. If you want what is still a somewhat out-of-the-way spot, the time to visit Playa Hermosa is now. In 5 years, the village will probably be almost totally transformed into a smaller version of the neighbouring boisterous Playa del Coco.

The purpose of our visit to Playa Hermosa was for a simple, quiet winter getaway. Something that millions of other middle-class North Americans seem to do every winter, but we had not yet managed. (No hiking, no biking, no rushing from one ecotourist hot spot to another--no, no, no!)

That understood, for peace and quiet, stay away from Playa del Coco. Unless you're running out of money or you need some stamps for your postcards, Playa del Coco is a rather tawdry, sprawling tourist town that's best avoided. Larger and noisier than Playa Hermosa, the most noticeable things about Playa del Coco are the concentration of tourist-excursion operators and cheap souvenir shops. Don't say I didn't warn you.