Explore Costa Rica
Most Beautiful Beaches
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Costa Rica boasts glorious beaches. Only a few, however, are of the frost-white variety silvering the shore like confectioners’ sugar. Such diamond-dust beaches are found along sections of Nicoya, plus Manuel Antonio National Park. The vast majority are of taupe color, many with the texture of potting soil, the result of sediments washed down from the mountains by rivers. Several beaches are almost black.
The Caribbean Coast
Gandoca-Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge: These silvery sands are often littered with flotsam. Nonetheless, backed by rugged mountains and various types of tropical forest, the miles-long, palm-fringed beach offers stupendous beauty.
Guanacaste and the Northwest
Playa Blanca: Located in the Murciélago Sector in Santa Rosa National Park, Playa Blanca is one of the least accessible beaches in the country, but this one lives up to its name: White Beach. It is framed by cliffs that add to the beauty.
The Nicoya Peninsula
Playa Flamingo: Perhaps the most magnificent white-sand beach in the nation, this gently curving scimitar is cusped by rugged headlands and shelves gently into calm turquoise waters.
Playa Conchal: Although always crowded, this beach of tiny seashells changes from bleach white to gray, depending on tidal and weather conditions. The calm turquoise waters host a coral reef.
Playa Grande: This long, sweeping beach is dramatic for its sheer length and for its vast views across the bay towards Tamarindo.
Playa Pelada: Studded with rocky islets and tidepools, this ruler-straight expanse can be 200 meters deep with the tide out. It was recently the setting for an arribada of Ridley turtles.
Montezuma: Stretching east from the eponymous village, this palm-shaded coral-colored beach shelves into crashing surf.
Playa Santa Teresa: Rugged headlands and isles, tropical moist forest leaning over the beach, and fearsome surf combine to make this one of the most visually dramatic of the nation’s beaches.
Central Pacific
Manuel Antonio: Curling around a sheltered bay like a shepherd’s crook, this beach within Manuel Antonio National Park has it all: calm turquoise waters, rocky headlands, rainforest behind, and views towards distant mountains.
Playas Esterillos: Four beaches in one running along some 20 kilometers of shoreline, these gray sands are palm-fringed their entire length.
Playa Ballena: Backed by forested coastal mountains and shadowed by towering palms and rainforest trees, this miles-long beach in the Whale Marine National Park is a great place to view wildlife patrolling the beach.
Golfo Dulce and the Osa Peninsula
Playa Zancudo: Washed by surf and littered with tree trunks, this beach has stupendous views across the Golfo Dulce.
© Christopher P. Baker from Moon Costa Rica, 6th Edition
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