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 ocean-view developments in the roughly 200 kilometers of coastline that stretch from Marbella up to the Nicaraguan border. And for some areas, it’s all just beginning.

The boom comes partly from a perfect storm of factors that converged toward the beginning of this decade. The Daniel Oduber International Airport opened in 2002, roughly coinciding with the launching of the government’s Papagayo tourism product and the opening of the Four Seasons resort there, the first luxury mixed-use resort of its kind in the country. Tamarindo’s beautiful beach and its titled beachfront property (difficult to find in a country where most beach front property is under the Maritime Zone concessions regime) became hot items for investors and in no time turned the town from a row of sleepy fishing villages visited only by surfers and backpackers to a real estate hotspot.

These days in Tamarindo, you’re likely to cross paths with more developers, real estate brokers, and lawyers than you are surfers and backpackers. It’s been developing like mad (some would say out of control) for the past five years, and there’s no going back. The Tamarindo frenzy spread up and down the coast, and beach towns within that magic hour of the Liberia airport have been the prime targets for investors.

Each beach village has experienced it’s own slightly different flavor of development, but from Langosta to Hermosa it’s all hot. Each town has its uniqueness to offer, and this section will take you through them one by one, and explain what’s happening in each.

South of Tamarindo and Langosta, the pace of development slows considerably. The vast Hacienda Pinilla project, which backs onto three miles of beach, inadvertently acts as a buffer zone against the Tamarindo sprawl south. The beaches from Avellana south are growing at a much slower pace, with a few large developments under construction at the time of writing, but more inevitably on the way.

Carrillo, Sámara, and Nosara are in a market quite distinct from the Tamarindo and Papagayo scene. Sámara is about a 2-hour drive from the Liberia airport, and Nosara is another 30-45 minutes further on a horrendous dirt road that is sometimes impassable in rainy season. Papagayo, meanwhile, is in its own world, almost literally: the whole peninsula is under a special regimen that grants special 99-year concessions to luxury hotels and other tourism developments. It has its own security guards and you have to show ID even to enter the premises. It sits on a piece of land with incredible views, and the project’s success has lured in many high-end developers with their pick of luxury hotel operators. As far up as the Nicaraguan border, the area above the Santa Elena Peninsula is currently being snapped up in large chunks by developers who should start building within the next few years.

This section will be divided up into six areas.

1. Langosta to Potrero (including Pinilla.)

2. Playas del Coco and Hermosa

3. Hermosa to Peninsula Papagayo.

4. 27 Abril, Lagarto, Manzanillo, Playa Negra, Marbella.

5. Carrillo, Sámara and the beaches of Nosara.

6. North of Peninsula Santa Elena.

As a final note of introduction to this region, Guanacaste’s development scramble has been poorly managed and in the last few years has born some bitter fruit. Tamarindo’s beach is regularly found to be contaminated by fecal coliform bacteria from sewage, making it not suitable for bathing. Developers in the boom areas of Hermosa and Coco, meanwhile, are finding the hot, dry beach weather has the not-so-nice effect of making water scarce during the dry season – exactly the moment when hundreds of thousands of tourists check into hotels and rental condos and start flushing toilets and taking showers. At certain times there’s not even enough to drink, much less to water golf courses and fill swimming pools. Also, as far as the real estate market, rapid price increases have attracted speculators looking to make a quick buck, inflating prices quite bit. Guanacaste is still a beautiful place to live and visit, but it’s become a difficult place to invest, and the mess caused by its mismanaged growth make its future uncertain.