Tamarindo

Tamarindo Roads Report. As you enter Tamarindo you will be on the main (and only) street into town, which is paved and in fairly poor repair. It runs along the coast and dead-ends in a little roundabout. All the side and backstreets are dirt, and are in very poor condition (lots of potholes).

With all the development going on in Tamarindo, I was amazed that road infrastructure was not more of a priority. Here's the scoop (from a local): Tamarindo needs a sewage system installed, which won't happen for another 2-3 years! In the meantime the government isn't going to pave the roads (since they would just have to be dug up to install the sewer lines). In addition, Tamarindo falls under the jurisdiction of nearby Santa Cruz, which is supposed to periodically send road graters to smooth out all the dirt roads. But due to politics and money, this rarely happens. Thus the local roads in Tamarindo are left to languish.

Here is a video of driving through Tamarindo. The yellow arrow on the map is the route shown in the video.

[CLICK here to view the video]

The worst condition road that we encountered throughout our entire Costa Rica trip was actually the backroads connecting Tamarindo to its adjacent neighbor to the west - Playa Langosta, where we stayed at the Sueno Del Mar B&B. The two towns are only about 1km apart, but you have to drive really slow on the dirt road connecting them due to the number of potholes. Here is a video of that road as we drive from the Sueno Del Mar B&B, past the Hotel Capitan Suizo, and into the backroads of Tamarindo. Once again, refer to the yellow arrow on the map to see exactly where it is:

(Warning: Video not for the faint of heart, may cause motion sickness!)

[CLICK here to view the video]