Playa Guiones & Nosara

Fitness was the focus of our first month and we both really enjoyed the classes at Aleo Studios, Nalu and the Bodhi Tree Gym. Our classes and teachers were excellent, and it was a great experience to spend our afternoons together in the sunshine.

Classes usually started at 8:30 am and since Playa Guiones was a 35-minute drive, we generally left the house by 7:30 am. We took a variety of Pilates, Booty & Abs, Total Body Strength, Pilates & Strength and Barre classes, which I had never tried before. It gave me a whole new perspective on how fit Yim has to be to be good at Ballet, especially after taking the Barre class.

I learned quite a bit in Pilates – a few new moves and a couple of pieces of equipment which might come in handy in our home gym—and the people at Aleo were just so great. Jesse was the instructor we spent the most class time with, and Jimena was just awesome at reception. They were warm and inviting and made us both feel very accepted. I thank them for that.

Playa Guiones was built around the Wellness trend and it shows. It’s like a little bubble in Costa Rica. There are many wealthy people living in the area, with wildly expensive homes but the dirt roads are absolutely terrible. It’s almost comical when you see it. There are quite a few fairly pretentious hotels tucked away in lush tropical gardens and it seemed like an enclave for the wealthy and for surfer bums, which I suppose is the vibe they are going for. 

It’s also very disjointed – there are sections that have been developed and others that are still jungle so it’s hard to find your way around. Stores can be spread out down other dirt roads, which, unless you go on an adventure, can be hard to find. It’s really necessary to have a GPS system and spend a few days finding your way through the winding streets if you want to find the shops. After that, just wandering around was fun and allowed us to discover little restaurants and stores where Yim found a couple of very nice dresses.

Daily Life in Esterones

After class, we went grocery shopping. While the first week was bumpy with our poor Spanish, understanding the currency conversion and not knowing what foods we were looking at often, it was still fun. I love grocery shopping so even though it took us a lot longer than normal to buy a few groceries, it was definitely entertaining. There was an abundance of grocery stores and by the end of our stay, we discovered that two of them were owned by Cantonese families and Yim struck a conversation with them on more than one occasion.

After groceries, we would head home, shower (I used the outside one daily) and make ourselves a couple of smoothies. Mangoes, papaya and bananas were cheap and we brought our Thrive protein powder.

Then we would get ready for our afternoon walk along Playa Buenavista, which was a real gift for us. 

I don’t think either of us thought that when we went to the local beach, we would have it virtually to ourselves. But most days, that’s exactly how it was. There may have been five or ten people scattered somewhere over the length of Playa Buenavista, but they were mostly hard to see.

Playa Buenavista

Just five minutes from our house, a short sandy road led to a quiet stretch of coastline framed by palm trees and big open sky – Playa Buenavista. A few simple picnic tables were set near the entrance, and most days there were only a handful of people scattered along the shoreline.

The beach stretches for nearly four kilometres, and walking its length and back took about an hour. On most afternoons, we had it almost entirely to ourselves. That solitude felt like a gift.

I woke early and enjoyed spectacular sunrises along this stretch – which to me is a breathtaking spectacle to watch unfold in the sky. There is something magical about watching the sun emerge on the horizon, casting its golden rays and painting the world in a myriad of colours. It always fills me with happiness and a sense of peace and well-being.  

We watched fishermen standing in the waves casting their nets, children trying their luck at surfing or boogie boarding, which I also spent time enjoying, and families gathering casually along the shore. When the heat became intense, we would run into the ocean to cool off before continuing our walk.

Those daily walks quickly became one of the highlights of our stay.  At home, I typically run every day, but these long beach walks replaced that routine naturally—and I didn’t miss the treadmill at all.

And splashing in the waves together was a joy. This was the first time in many years that Yim and I actually got to play in the water together, seeing how far out we could go out into the waves and laughing as they pushed us back towards the beach. Yim is a bit afraid of the waves, and I can still hear her yelling ” it’s coming, it’s coming!!

After our walks, we often played backgammon while we shared an apple, watermelon or pineapple. On our short drive home, we occasionally encountered the wild horses that run freely around the area. 

It was a fairly idyllic end to our afternoons.

Evenings and Simplicity

Most evenings were quiet and unhurried. The sun would set just before 6:00 p.m., and if we weren’t down at Playa Barrigona watching it, the sky would light up in shades of orange and pink over the pastures in front of our casita. Once the evening skies had settled in, we would make dinner. Just like in Collingwood, cooking and sharing meals remained a relaxing part of life for us, a time for us to talk about the simple pleasures of our day.

After cleaning up, we would spend time on the couch, reviewing photos, reading, playing crosswords, writing grocery notes for the next day, or crafting storylines for our morning posts. 

With no television in the house, we were completely free from most daily media noise and this was deliberate. I really felt that recent political events had been gradually taking too much of our lives and not having access was healthy for both of us. It allowed us to focus on each other and our surroundings. By the end of the month, we felt both refreshed and more in tune with each other.

We were usually in bed by 8:30 p.m., often awakened by the rooster between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. Yim slept a little later with earplugs, but by 6:15 a.m., we were typically in the kitchen preparing for the day ahead.

Our Neighbourhood

At the corner, about a three minute walk from our front door, was a small mini-market and it carried some essentials, like bananas, mangos, papayas, tomatoes, onions, avocados, lettuce, yams and water. It also had a reasonable selection of household goods and we found pasta there as well as vanilla ice cream cups, of which I am certain we bought their entire stock.

There was also a small restaurant known as El Coyote. It doesn’t look like much but we made reservations for our first Friday night there and when we arrived, we were the only people there. Rather than look at a menu, we both told the owner, Mariana, what we wanted – Yim wanted something with fish and a Pina Colada and I wanted a traditional Costa Rican vegetarian dish.  Then, we waited. Yim got her Pina Colada and we talked for about 40 minutes before our meals arrived and they were absolutely delicious.  It was a fun night out. We highly recommend it if you are in the area.

Our neighbours added to the charm of the area. Friendly waves and nods were common, and it was clear that multiple generations shared the streets and porches together. Grandparents sat chatting while children played nearby, and families often lingered on front porches well into the evening.

We also watched one fellow with a motorcycle drive along the beach on many days, cutting up the largest of the logs that had washed ashore and load them onto a little trailer he pulled behind his motorcycle. Twice I watched as he got stuck in the sand and other locals came over to push him along. We could only assume he was using them as building materials, but it also cleaned up sections of the beach.

I’ve included a few photos of our immediate neighbours below, as well as a shot of Yim walking off to the supermarket. It was simple and basic, and obvious that life moved slowly here. We were out in the countryside. Cowboys on horses passed our front door daily.

Observations About Living in the Area

We ate out about twice a week and our best meals were in the comfort of a local SODA – a small, informal Costa Rican eatery which serves traditional home-style meals, usually run by local families and popular with residents for their fresh, simple food. 

We recommend La Malacrianza if you are visiting Garza, Almendros near Nosara, and of course, El Coyote if you are in Esterones.

Since part of our travels is using the experience to judge where we want to spend several months of our year now, here’s my perspective of this area after our month long stay.

• From a fitness and wellness perspective, it was top notch. If you want access to a wide range of fitness studios, this area was perfect, if you don’t mind traveling. We chose it because it was close to Playa Buenavista. and are glad we did. Neither of us would have enjoyed the crowds on the more popular beaches. However, that did mean dealing with the dirt roads and that was a daily challenge. The other option would be to stay closer to Playa Guiones than we did, but the cost of accommodations was considerably more expensive. 

• From a grocery perspective, we spent about the same on groceries as we do in Collingwood. 

• From a living perspective and not a tourist perspective, we both found the area a little expensive. Living here would certainly reduce a lot of those costs, but we are not looking to live somewhere (as yet), we are looking to visit somewhere for three or four months and find a seasonal life we both love. While there were many things we loved, we would require a home with more amenities than what we had at Casita Esterones for us to feel satisfied, so that may be available with a little more looking. We both enjoyed our time here very much.

• The Roads. An important takeaway for anyone considering this area was the condition of the roads. By the end of the month, neither of us wanted to bounce down the dirt roads again unless absolutely necessary. The dust alone was remarkable. Motorcyclists wore masks over their faces, and pedestrians were frequently surrounded by clouds of fine powder whenever a vehicle passed.

On a few occasions, we stopped to pick people up so they didn’t have to walk through the dust. We also watched locals spreading molasses from the back of pickup trucks to help bind the road surface. It created a sticky layer that reduced dust, though it made walking messy. From what we heard, the rainy season brings an entirely different set of challenges, with flooding and deep mud replacing the dust.

Could we learn to live with that? I think so if we had a rugged 4 x 4, like a Jeep. 

• Cycling. Something that is important to me, also proved very difficult. The road conditions and traffic made it feel unsafe for regular riding, which is a significant factor for how I like to live day-to-day. 

There were also some frustrations with the property itself. The listing advertised two bikes in good working condition, but when we arrived one was unusable and the other would not shift properly. After contacting the property manager, it took more than two weeks for a repair, and even then the pedals failed again shortly afterward, leaving me pushing the bike 30 minutes home across the beach. While minor in isolation, experiences like that matter when evaluating longer seasonal stays, especially when certain amenities are part of the rental agreement.

And while I did enjoy the little time I got to bike ride, I tried to bike up the hilly road that led out towards Nosara and gave up. There were too many potholes and too steep a climb and as I mentioned, every time a car passed, I cursed at him for getting a face full of dust. There’s no way I could bike there in either dry or wet season other than down to the beach and back, which might be enough to satisfy me as the ride was absolutely gorgeous.

While I don’t think I’d be biking much if we stayed in this area for the winters, I know that I’d try again, a little harder, if we did return.

• Infrastructure. Our stay revealed a way of life that, while simple and community-oriented, had living conditions that were more modest than expected, with limited infrastructure and few apparent recycling options despite the region’s reputation for sustainability. We located the local recycling facility and brought our recycling there weekly and they looked at us with surprise when we showed up as if no Gringo had ever been there before. That wasn’t a big deal for us. 

At the time, that surprised me but since returning, I have done some research and come to realize that most Costa Ricans don’t use much in the way of plastics. They drink their tap water and most of our recycling was large plastic water jug containers. So we were generating the unnecessary plastic waste. Living there for longer periods would change that because the water in Costa Rica is perfectly drinkable and we know that now but we didn’t want to take any chances in our first month away.

However, strict environmental rules do limit local infrastructure. Large parts of the region are environmentally protected, especially near the Ostional Wildlife Refuge, famous for sea turtle nesting, which we visited twice.  While this may be positive environmentally, it also means that paved roads are restricted in many areas. Even wealthy areas still have dirt roads, extreme dust in dry season and lots of mud in the rainy season. Large sewage systems are difficult to approve. Water goes offline frequently, as does the power grid. 

This was particularly noticeable in rural areas such as the region around where we were staying—eco-tourism exists there partly because development has been restrained. Costa Rica has deliberately built its international reputation around conservation, biodiversity protection, and eco-tourism. The country protects their ecosystems first, and accepts slower infrastructure development. They rely on tourism income rather than industrial expansion so limited road development is not purely neglect—it’s also a soft form of environmental protection. It’s just a surprise when you experience it for the first time and is something that would be easy to support if we lived there for several months of the year.

I loved the climate here, the dry heat and the way it made my skin feel. I could easily live in the sunshine year round.

What We Loved

There were many things we truly appreciated:

• Sunrises
• Aleo Studio, Nalu Studio and the Bodhi Tree Gym
• Daily grocery shopping
• Farmers markets
• Walking daily along Playa Buenavista
• The sound of howler monkeys in the distance
• Wild horses roaming freely
• Outdoor living in constant warmth
• The slower pace of life
• The local SODA’s
• Ceviche in Garza
• Sunsets
• The opportunity to reset from daily media exposure

The climate especially stood out. I loved the heat and the way it made my skin feel. I could easily live in sunshine year-round.