Tamarindo is a sand-bottomed beach break going both ways, on a west-north-westerly swell with an easterly offshore, and one of the best places in the world for a first week.
The figures read like a warning until you see who they are for. January, its best month: two or three genuinely clean days out of thirty, one lost to wind, and everything else too small for an experienced surfer. One windy day in a month is remarkable, and it is the offshore mornings Guanacaste is known for. As for the twenty-seven days too small, those are exactly the days a school runs on.
It is often crowded, the honest cost of all of the above. The bottom is sand, no rock and no urchins: you can fall here without thinking about it, which stops being true twenty minutes south.
Spot sheet
- Level
- Beginner, Intermediate
- Wave
- Left and right
- Bottom
- Sand
- 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
No guide names a hazard here. That is not the same as safe.
Technical figures read off published surf guides. Where two disagree, the sheet says so.
Other spots in Tamarindo
See all spotsWhen this stops being enough, the step up is Playa Negra, in the same village.