A complete travel guide to Nosara, Costa Rica — surf at Playa Guiones, sunrise yoga, Café de Playa, turtles at Ostional, and the slow rhythm of seven days on the Nicoya Peninsula.
People come to Nosara, Costa Rica for a long weekend and stay for a week. They come for a week and start asking, by Thursday, what it would take to come back for a month. This is what a week here actually looks like — what to do in Playa Guiones, where to eat, when to be in the water, and the one morning you should set an alarm for even though you came here to stop setting them.
Where Nosara is, and what to expect
Nosara is a small town on the Pacific coast of the Nicoya Peninsula, about five hours by car from San José or forty minutes by light plane to the Aeródromo de Nosara airstrip. It is built around three beaches — Playa Guiones, Playa Pelada, and Playa Garza — and one of the most consistent surf breaks in Central America.
The town has, deliberately, no high-rises, no chain hotels, and not many street lights. The road in is still red dirt. Cell reception is patchy and, by the second day, you stop noticing. The closest traffic light is two hours away.
Day 1 — Sunday: arriving slowly
Land at Liberia (LIR) in the late morning, pick up a 4x4 (you will need it — the last twenty minutes of road are unpaved), and drive the two and a half hours south through dry forest. Stop at the soda in Nicoya town for a casado — rice, beans, plantains, grilled fish — and a fresco de cas. Arrive in Nosara by mid-afternoon.
Do nothing the rest of the day. Swim. Watch the sunset from the south end of Playa Guiones. Eat at La Luna in Pelada, on the rocks at the north end. Sleep with the windows open.
Day 2 — Monday: the surf lesson you didn't think you'd take
Playa Guiones is one of the most forgiving learn-to-surf waves in the world: long, slow, sand-bottomed, with a tide window of about four hours every morning. Even committed non-surfers should take one lesson. Coconut Harry's and Safari Surf School both run small-group lessons at dawn and are honest about how much board you actually need.
Afterwards, breakfast at Café de Playa — huevos rancheros, papaya with lime, a flat white that is genuinely good. The rest of the morning, hammock. Around three, walk the full length of Guiones at low tide. It is seven kilometres of pale sand and you will not pass more than twenty people.
Day 3 — Tuesday: yoga, and then the river
Nosara has, by some accounting, more yoga shalas per capita than any town in the western hemisphere. The serious one is the Nosara Yoga Institute above Playa Guiones; the gentler one is Bodhi Tree, which has open-air pavilions in the jungle and a Mysore-style Ashtanga room at sunrise.
In the afternoon, drive twenty minutes inland and rent a kayak on the Río Nosara, where the river opens into a mangrove estuary. You will see white ibis, roseate spoonbills, almost certainly a crocodile sunning on the far bank, and — if you are quiet — a troop of capuchin monkeys at the high water mark.
Day 4 — Wednesday: the day you wake up at 4 a.m.
Forty minutes north of Nosara is Playa Ostional, where, on the dark moon of most months between August and December, between ten thousand and a hundred thousand olive-ridley sea turtles come ashore at once to nest. The phenomenon is called an arribada, and it is one of the few wildlife events on earth that still happens at this scale.
The community of Ostional manages the arribada itself — visits are guided, low-impact, and quietly extraordinary. (We wrote about it in more detail [here](/blog/the-arribada-at-ostional).) Even outside arribada season, dawn at Ostional is worth the early alarm: dark volcanic sand, almost no people, a pelican line working the break.
Day 5 — Thursday: a slow day in town
Sleep in. Walk to Olga's in Pelada for fish tacos. Visit the Reserva Biológica Nosara, a small private reserve at the river mouth with raised boardwalks through mangrove — best at the morning low tide.
In the afternoon, the farmers' market at the Nosara Tienda (Saturdays in season, but the smaller Tuesday/Thursday market runs year-round) is where most of the town shows up: organic produce from the finca up the hill, raw chocolate from Hojancha, lemongrass kombucha, empanadas de chiverre. Bring cash and a tote bag.
Day 6 — Friday: a longer drive
Two options, both good. Option one: drive ninety minutes south to Playa Sámara and Carrillo — calmer water, good for snorkelling, the long crescent of Carrillo arguably the prettiest beach in the country. Option two: drive ninety minutes north to Playa Santa Teresa for a different surf culture entirely and dinner at Koji (sushi at a wooden bar, the chef trained in Osaka).
We usually do option one. The road is straighter.
Day 7 — Saturday: the last morning
Surf at dawn, breakfast at Café Paris in Guiones, one last walk on the beach. Drive out by noon if you have a Liberia flight; if you're flying out of the Nosara strip, you have until three.
Almost everyone, by this point, has started a half-serious conversation about coming back.
What to pack for a week in Nosara
- Two pairs of sandals, one of which can get wet.
- Linen everything. It dries in twenty minutes here.
- Reef-safe sunscreen (regular sunscreen is now restricted on several beaches).
- A rash guard for surfing — long-sleeve, lighter than you'd think.
- A dry bag for the kayak and the beach.
- Cash in colones for the markets and small sodas.
- A book you actually want to finish — you will have time.
Practical notes
When to come: December through April for the driest weather and biggest waves; May, June, and November are quieter, greener, and roughly half the price.
Getting around: rent a 4x4 in Liberia. The roads inside Nosara are improving but still rough, especially after rain.
Where to stay: the [Noma suites](/properties) are a three-minute walk to the south end of Playa Guiones, built for exactly this rhythm.
If you'd like us to plan the week for you — surf lessons, the Ostional visit, a private chef one evening — our [concierge is happy to](/contact). We don't, however, plan Day 1 or Day 7. Those, you should keep for yourself.
