Playa Samara

Playa Samara is a former, small fishing village on the Pacific central coast. It's a four and a half hour drive from San Jose. The school and my apartment is  in the main part of the village and my participants are staying in the outskirts in a "suburb" called Canajagral. They have between a half mile to mile walk each way every morning.

The beach is horseshoe shaped with an island and a reef that protects it. At low tide you can see the reef and the waves breaking over it. The island is deserted and can be easily reached from the southern end of the bay during low tide. There is a sandbar and some good snorkeling.

In the north end of the bay, there is a small village with a scattering of house and rocky outcropping. Next to it a large field where horses and cattle graze which is ringed by coconut palm trees. On weekends you often see the locals picnicking under these trees. Rumor has it, the field was once wetland/marsh and  a developer (gringo?) came in and filled it in without permission. Apparently they shut him down and now it is an expensive pasture.

To the south of the field is a fresh water river that depending on the tides is crossable by foot. After that there are some restaurants and bars and then the school. South of the school are more restaurants and bars and then the police station which is at the western end of the main road. If you walk along the main road after the police station and post office there are stores and the football (soccer) field ringed by restaurants, hotels, hostels, the bank, and other stores. continuing on the main road is more of the same. Fishing has been replaced by tourism so there is a hodgepodge of business designed to cater to the demands of Europeans, Americans and others cash-fisted tourists.

South of the main road, along the beach are higher end restaurants and hotels. My favorite is La Vela Latina, owned by an ECC grad.
(A family of monkeys is traveling by as I write this. About a half dozen with a few babies. It's hard to get good photos but it's cool to see the little ones).

To the south is another smaller village called El Torito where many of the fisherman live. In the morning when I walk the beach I see them rolling their pangas out on round foam(?) rollers. It costs two hundred dollars for four hours to go fishing with them. They can fit up to three others comfortably. I hope to get do that again. Last time we caught quite a few fish. El Torito is also where we teach the children in the afternoons.