How Staying in a Villa in Costa Rica Changes the Way You Experience Tamarindo
Most visitors experience Tamarindo from the outside. They’ll usually book a room, work their way through a list of beaches and tours they saw on Insta, take countless photos, and fly home with a tan and a somewhat hazy memory of the place. But here at The Point Luxury Villa, we’ve been seeing a different version of the luxury experiential travel play out for years.
When you build your week around a stay in a villa in Costa Rica, your base town stops being a checklist and starts feeling like somewhere you can belong. With a dedicated team of professionals who are insiders, first and foremost, everything about your destination, from the surf to the wildlife, the food, and the long evenings, becomes part of your everyday life.
LIVING ON THE POINT BETWEEN TWO BEACHES
The Point Luxury Villa sits on a sliver of land that just out into the Pacific. Tamarindo Beach is a short walk to the right and the wide, soft sand of Langosta Beach is to the left. Seven oceanfront suites, an infinity pool set above the water, an ocean-view gym, and a beautifully shaded gazebo: this is where your days start and finish. The property sits inside a gated community with round-the-clock security, and our private beachfront stay sleeps up to 17, so your whole group wakes under one roof and doesn’t need to share the breakfast table with a host of strangers.
That accommodation choice changes your relationship to Tamarindo more than anything else. Instead of moving through a crowded lobby to be somewhere, a villa in Costa Rica makes you feel at home immediately. You have a kitchen and a terrace, a gorgeous infinity pool, and a team who knows the town inside out. Stay with us, and you’ll find Tamarindo opening up to you the way it does for the people who live here year-round.
MORNINGS BELONG TO THE OCEAN
Tamarindo built its name and reputation on surf, so trust us, even if you’ve never been on a board before, this is the best place to try. The beach break in town is one of the friendliest places in the country to learn, with soft whitewater a short paddle out and instructors who can have a first-timer standing by lunchtime. The water sits around 80 degrees all year, so there is no wetsuit to wrestle with, and the gentlest waves roll in from December through April. At the north end, the rivermouth is a longboarder’s favorite, while we can take stronger surfers just ten minutes away to the wedges off Playa Grande or the long walls at Playa Avellanas.
What we typically do at the villa is spend the morning surfing. You wake before the wind comes up, walk down to the water, take a private 90-minute surf lesson, and come back to coffee on your own terrace while the kitchen handles breakfast. Our team can have boards and a private instructor ready, so the only thing you need to decide is when to paddle out. If this is something you are interested in trying, we wrote a full guide on How to Plan a Luxury Surf Trip in Tamarindo.
THE VERSION OF TAMARINDO RESERVED FOR THOSE IN THE KNOW
Tamarindo has a serious table or two, and its beachfront kitchens can turn out ceviche and fresh-caught fish with real polish. The standout sits a short drive north in Las Catalinas, the car-free beach town where Sentido Norte crowns a hilltop above the coast. Open-air and enchanting to the max, with killer sunset views and chef Jose Lopez cooking coastal delights, the restaurant draws people from across Guanacaste. CNN even named it one of the world’s most romantic restaurants and we’d have to agree. Tables for sunset supper go quickly, though, but our team can secure your table with enough notice.
The most elevated Tamarindo table of all, though, is the one we set at the villa. Our private Chef sources the morning catch and cooks it steps from your pool, a dinner behind closed doors that needs no reservation and no drive home. Tell us what you love, and we will build the menu around it, be it a long tasting under the gazebo or a simple grill by the fire pit. For the full picture of the ultimate in luxury experiential travel experiences, see our in-home services.
WILD COSTA RICA, JUST PAST THE GATE
Some of the best of Tamarindo sit a few minutes outside town. A boat ride into the estuary guides you through the mangroves of Las Baulas National Marine Park, where bilingual naturalist guides point out howler monkeys overhead and crocodiles along the muddy banks. Herons and iguanas turn up at almost every bend. It is a shaded, comfortable and easy couple of hours spent, and as good for grandparents as it is for small children.
From October through March, Playa Grande, just to the north, becomes one of the largest and most important leatherback nesting sites in the world. The females haul ashore at night to lay their eggs, with January the peak of the season. Visits run with a park guide only and no flashlights, since light turns the turtles back toward the sea. Our concierge handles the booking and the timing and arranges the rest of your guided excursions.
Our favorite recommendation? While all the excursions we offer are exquisite, we think setting aside an afternoon for a private catamaran out of Tamarindo is the bees’ knees. The boat is yours alone, with an open bar and a snorkeling stop at the Catalina Islands, where you swim above manta rays and reef sharks.
SPONTANEOUS EVENINGS FOR THE ULTIMATE WIN
Tamarindo faces west, so sunsets here become a daily event worth celebrating. Plenty of guests stroll down for a drink at a beach club as the sky turns over the Pacific, then wander back. Our bartender Angel will happily set up a private mixology class on the terrace beforehand if you like, so the happy-hour cocktails in hand are the ones you made, and the chef lays out dinner by the pool while the fire pit burns long after the plates are cleared.
We find the setting is what guests enjoy more and this is where a villa does something a restaurant table booked for two hours cannot. No one’s waiting to take your place, teenagers can drift to the pool while the grandparents settle into the gazebo, and the night can run as late as it wants to. We have watched families who say they normally don’t get to see each other much spend four consecutive evenings together here. It’s wonderful to know we help families make memories here.
And when you are ready to get out and about in the evening, here’s our take on the after-dark side of town: Tamarindo’s evenings and dining guide.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF LUXURY
The draw of the glistening oversized marble lobby is no longer a thing. Nowadays, luxury experiential travel means having the freedom to experience a place the way you want to. A villa in Costa Rica gives you that: all the best parts of Tamarindo, while a team takes care of the parts you would rather skip if you could.
That is the version of Tamarindo we love most, and it all sits at the very center of the experience we built at The Point. If luxury experiential travel for you means a week you live instead of one you simply book, that is exactly what we set out to offer.
At The Point Luxury Villa in Costa Rica, we create tailored stays built around all the things that feed your soul. If you’d love to experience Tamarindo through The Point, message our Concierge, and we will start shaping your 2026 stay.
