This morning we woke up ready to go surfing! We finished our fresh pineapple for breakfast, and packed our car for our next adventure to Tamarindo, which is about an hour and a half south of Playa Hermosa. We’ll be staying at Baliyana Lodge for two nights, which is about 25 minutes from the town of Tamarindo. Baliyana is up the mountain and definitely requires a 4×4 to get to because of the bumpy dirt road leading to the hotel. It’s a small boutique hotel that’s relatively new. Some may opt to stay in the town of Tamarindo, but we felt like this was just far away from the hustle and bustle of this busy surf town, yet still close enough for a day trip.
The hosts of Baliyana are as lovely as ever. They speak French, but they did their very best to communicate with us and made our stay unforgettable. We got there well before check-in, but we were able to drop off our bags with them so that we didn’t have to leave them in our car while we were surfing.
We made our way to Tamarindo to explore this lively beach town and to surf some waves! We rented a surfboard from Iguana Surf, which was $10USD for 2hrs (or $15USD for 5hrs). The waves were perfect for beginners, and we’ve both surfed before so we didn’t opt for a lesson (they do offer group and private lessons though). We had such a great time and ended up surfing until the very last minute before having to return our board!
After returning the surfboard, we walked further into town to Jardin Food Truck Park for lunch. We found so many different options, so we got a little bit of everything. We even found an Asian food truck with Filipino food and a Filipino chef/owner! We got Filipino fried rice with chicken, and also got a Tico hot dog from a different truck, and a passion fruit lemonade from another…it was all SO delicious!
We mentioned there are two artists we saw on a Netflix show that we really want to check out while in Tamarindo, so after lunch we decided to stop by. The first is Art Gallery Café owned by artist Junior Rodriguez, who is a pretty amazing abstract artist. His signature pieces include a surfboard with fins, which we absolutely love! While we wished we could take home some of the bigger framed pieces, we were eyeing two smaller pieces that had his signature surfboard style. When we mentioned that we were on our honeymoon, Junior was generous enough to gift us one of the two pieces and reduced the price of the other…so we ended up getting both of the ones we loved! He does such amazing work, but it’s the kind gestures that really move us.
We left the gallery feeling very humbled by Junior’s generosity and made our way back to the car parked right on the beach. Along the beach we found Volcano Brewing Company, so we had to stop by for a quick flight.
The other artist we really wanted to meet was at the end of the block on Tamarindo’s main road…a small studio called Guaitil Pottery Studio. Arbin is an artisan who makes pre-columbian pottery with techniques dating back over 500 years. He spoke to us about the methods he uses and how they have been passed down through generations in his family. He even does pottery classes…if we had more time we totally would have taken a class! His work was beautiful, and if there’s one thing we recommend doing while traveling the world, it’s to support local artists.
After walking around the town of Tamarindo, we made our way back to our hotel. We have one more day here, and there’s plenty more to explore…so stay tuned!