Playa Negra is a beach and point break twenty minutes south, going both ways on a west-north-westerly swell with an easterly offshore, and best around mid tide.
It is what a week in Tamarindo turns into once standing up stops being the problem. January gives four or five clean days out of thirty, one lost to wind, and the rest small: better on size than Tamarindo, with the same near-total absence of wind.
The difference is underneath. Urchins and rocks, and that is the line between the two beaches: on one you can fall, on the other you watch where you put your feet. Booties change the week. It is a fairly popular wave that sometimes gets crowded, but there is more room here than in Tamarindo.
Spot sheet
- Level
- Intermediate, Advanced
- Wave
- Left and right
- Bottom
- Mixed
- Water
- 28 – 30 °C
- Wetsuit
- Shorty
- Swell window
- W – NW
- Ideal wind
- E
- How often it works
- Consistent
- Crowd
- ●●●●○
- Danger
- ●●●○○
A month in figures
In January, the month the forecast guides single out for this coast:
Shares of the month, from the published forecast statistics. The model reads a grid, so neighbouring breaks share a figure: this describes a stretch of coast, not this wave on its own. The other eleven months are not published.
What to watch for
- Sea urchins
- Rocks
Technical figures read off published surf guides. Where two disagree, the sheet says so.