Santa Teresa

When you drive down the road from Cobano to the beach, you will get to “the crossroads”, near Franks Place and the Playa Carmen mall. Santa Teresa is everything to the right, and Malpais is everything to the left. The crossroads is at Playa Carmen. No one seems to know what to call this area. Is it Malpais, Santa Teresa, or Playa Carmen? Whatever you call it, the area has become very popular in the last few years. Fifteen years ago when Montezuma was already a famous destination, Santa Teresa was just getting electricity. Santa Teresa’s world class surfing and gorgeous white sand beaches have put it on the map for tourists visiting Costa Rica, and hundreds of foreigners have moved there to live year round. Most of them surf nearly every day, and Santa Teresa is definitely a surfer’s dream town.

Santa Teresa is one very long road that parallels the beach for several miles, with hotels, restaurants, and various businesses along both sides. Every week another building appears, and there is a lot of development. So far, nothing over three stories high, but high-rise condos seem inevitable, since the real estate prices have made land very expensive. Still the prices rise as there seems to be no shortage of wealthy foreigners wanting to buy a piece of paradise, and Santa Teresa is the most expensive and desirable spot in the Southern Nicoya Peninsula.

Most of Santa Teresa is white sand beaches, with occasional rocky outcroppings. There are many public access roads to the beaches, and many natural rocky outcroppings and occasional rocky bottoms create some interesting and varied surf conditions. There are two great point breaks in Santa Teresa. On the mountain side of the road, are many rough steep dirt and gravel roads winding into the hills to reach many ocean view homes and building sites that dot the hills.

Santa Teresa is known as the place where the beautiful people of the world come to surf. Many celebrities and supermodels have been spotted here, sometimes riding a wave next to you. This is a surfer’s paradise with beautiful sunsets almost every night.

Santa Teresa Articles:

• Surfing in Santa Teresa
  Surfing is just one of the many things tourists can look forward to when visiting Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, but it is certainly an experienced that should not be missed. When planning a vacation getaway to this part of the world with the intent to explore the pristine blue waters, it is imperative to find ...
• La Lora Beach in Santa Teresa
  One of the most beautiful beaches around, and perhaps the reason that Forbes magazine voted the beaches of the Malpais/Santa Teresa among the Top 10 Most Breathtaking Beaches. This beach has soft white sand, with no rocks, so it’s a fairly safe beach. It’s named for the nightclub, called “La Lora Amarillo” (The Yellow Parrot) ...
• Playa Carmen’s White Sand Beach
  Playa Carmen is the first beach you’ll arrive at when you come down the hill from the mountains to the Santa Teresa / Malpais area of the southern Nicoya Peninsula. This is the center of the beach areas… to the south, everything is Mal Pais. To the north, you get to Santa Teresa, ...
• Playa Hermosa, the Most Beautiful Beach of the Santa Teresa Area
  Playa Hermosa is considered to be the most beautiful beach around the Santa Teresa area, and Hermosa (“beautiful beach” in Spanish). Older maps show this as the original name from as early as 1975 and possibly before. This beach is very long and the flattest beach around. At low tide it’s really huge, and ...