Playa Santa Catalina is an exposed point break taking south-south-west swell with a northerly offshore, and it is very consistent, which is the whole reason a village at the end of that road has camps in it.
January is the month: twenty-three clean days out of thirty, five blown out, two too small. Only Nicaragua returns better figures, and the mechanism is the same, a dry-season wind blowing offshore across the isthmus rather than anything special about the swell.
Urchins and rocks are named, and on a point this shape they are the entry and the inside rather than the line-up. Boots, and a look at where the locals walk in. It gets busy but not crowded: the road keeps the numbers down more effectively than any local ever could.
Spot sheet
- Level
- Intermediate, Advanced
- Bottom
- Point break
- Swell window
- S – SW
- Ideal wind
- N
- How often it works
- Very 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.