Water Northwest Guanacaste is the driest region of Costa Rica, as well as the area with the most tourism and real estate development – not all of it legal. Demand for water is massive, and it’s used for everything from drinking and bathing to filling swimming pools, watering golf courses, and mixing concrete. All this

Especially at this point in time, remember the mantra: Past performance is not indicative of future results. Northwest Guanacaste is just coming off six years of a booming real estate market, where condo sales options (not even the condos – just the options) could be flipped for thousands of dollars in profit. Prices inflated dramatically,

Northwest Guanacaste is cattle country. Before the tourist boom gripped the area, most people were farmers who spent their days herding cattle and working the land. Those who weren’t farmers or ranchers were probably fishermen. People who are used to the freedom of the fields or the ocean are never in very much of a

Public buses service the region’s main towns, but off those main routes it’s almost impossible to get around without a four-wheel drive. The road infrastructure has not kept pace with development. At the time of writing there were several bad patches of main road in the Tamarindo area, as well as several monkey tracks and

1. By Air a) International Getting to Northwest Guanacaste became considerably easier for North Americans in 2002, when the Daniel Oduber International Airport opened. Charter flights arrive there from the UK and the government is at the moment trying to concession out an expansion of the airport. Being within the “magic hour” of travel time

Northwest Guanacaste is the hottest and driest region of Costa Rica, made more so by the area’s deforestation a few decades ago to make room for agriculture. It has its own arid beauty very distinct from the rest of Costa Rica. The weather is more humid, and the lower precipitation makes it a dependable tourist

Of all the beach areas in Costa Rica, the Pacific coast of the northwest Guanacaste province is the one that has undergone the most explosive development, with the widest range of options and the most expensive properties in the country. For the last few years, developers have bee pouring millions of dollars into beach- and