You arrive by boat because there is no other way, cutting the engine in the shallows and wading the last twenty meters through bath-warm water that swirls around your knees. The beach unfurls in both directions, a tawny ribbon pressed between rainforest and sea, marked only by the punctuation of shorebird flocks lifting and resettling. Strangler figs and ceiba trees crowd to within meters of the high-tide line, their roots forming buttresses in the sandy soil.
“One of Costa Rica's few beaches where tapirs regularly leave tracks and river dolphins hunt in the surf zone.”
Credit: UnsplashPerson walking on a sand spit
The sand here holds a record of nocturnal visitors—the coin-sized divots of raccoon paws, the dragging belly-trail of a caiman that crossed from lagoon to ocean, the three-toed prints of a tapir that foraged along the wrack line. You'll find these signatures fresh each morning, erased by afternoon tide and rewritten overnight. River dolphins occasionally patrol just beyond the breakers, their dorsal fins slicing the surface as they herd fish against the current.
The protected status means the forest presses close and alive with sound—trogons calling from the canopy, the rustle of iguanas in leaf litter, the industrial hum of cicadas. At night the beach goes black except for bioluminescence sparking in the shorebreak, each wave crest trailing green fire. Your boat captain knows to time the return trip with the tide; miss the window and you wait six hours, which is not entirely a hardship.
