Why We Chose The Costa Rica Gold Coast Over The Southern Zone

This post is part of a series that covers our experiences in Buying Our First Property In Costa Rica:

• Why We Chose Not To Buy In The Philippines
• Why We Chose The Gold Coast Over the Southern Zone (Current Post)
• Why We Passed On This $400,000 Vacation Rental
• Why We Chose The Convenient Center Over The Quiet Hills
• How We Financed Our First Costa Rica Property

In our first trip to Costa Rica, we split our week between Tamarindo (the “Gold Coast”) and Ojochal (the “Southern Zone”). These were two areas we had read about, and we wanted to compare them back-to-back.

Visiting Tamarindo

Our flight landed San Jose, and we started with a five-hour road trip to Tamarindo. This would give us an idea of how difficult it would be to get there. Sure, there is a closer airport (Liberia) which puts you an hour’s drive to Tamarindo, but San Jose is the bigger, more heavily serviced airport. With more flights available, we would more likely be flying to San Jose.

The drive from San Jose to Tamarindo was comfortable. It was highway for the first half, partially multi-lane, then one lane state highway which is part of the Pan American Highway through Central America with lots of trucks, and then the second half was quiet paved roads through Guanacaste. We passed beach towns, mountainous terrain, and leafy, heavily grown areas. Costa Rica has several micro-climates, and that was clear even from the brief road trip.

Once in Tamarindo, we easily found our small hotel, tucked away from the town center, but still an easy few blocks’ walk to the beach and shops. Except for exploring nearby beach towns and a house we didn’t end up buying, we didn’t need the car for our time in Tamarindo. We tried different restaurants for every meal and easily walked to all of them.

Visiting Ojochal

We did need the car for the ride back to San Jose (and again it was a smooth trip). We were meeting up with a real estate scouting tour that focused on a three-day trip to Ojochal. We would be touring a development (actually it was several developments, some with houses already built out and people residing there, some with vacant lots ready for building, and some areas yet to be cleared and readied for development).

The drive to Ojochal took us in a different direction, and we had a chance to check out the newer highway and a different set of micro-climates. Going towards the Southern Zone, the climate is colder and wetter, but the benefit is lush vegetation – more jungle than beach.

Our tour provided the van and driver, so Scott had a chance to really enjoy the scenery. There was one more couple with us – a mother/ son team scouting for the mom’s retirement. The son was half Filipino, which is also my heritage!

Along the way, we passed small towns and even a bridge above a river full of crocodiles. The van let us off at one end of the bridge, and we walked across so we could take our time viewing these scary reptiles.  Here is a nice blog post on visiting the bridge.

Finally, we got to the development, where we toured built-out homes, vacant lots, and even the onsite handmade wood furniture operation that is exclusive to the homes built for that development. We visited a nearby beach, which didn’t have the pristine sand of Tamarindo, but had a spectacular jungle view. We had drinks at a nearby boutique hotel – it’s not all roughing it in the Southern Zone.

There was a lot to take in, and we seriously considered a couple of lots – one had a partial view of the ocean but a private walkway to a jungle lookout. If you were brave enough to follow the rocky path, you had a small waterfall view, and monkeys in the trees. The other lot that became our first choice had an unobstructed ocean view to one side and the jungle behind. We’d have to construct the house, but it would be a showstopper. The price was about a third of what you would spend in the Gold Coast, so this was definitely the better value play.

Choosing Tamarindo Over Ojochal

You know that we ended up buying in Tamarindo, so why did we select the Gold Coast over the Southern Zone?

Scott thought Ojochal matched more of what he expected in Costa Rica – the jungle, the wildlife, the small towns, the beach. He also liked the cooler climate. We both LOVED the views from the lot.

But then reality sets in:

• Do we really want to build a house from the ground up in a foreign country? We have never developed a house, and now we would be doing it from abroad.
• Our immediate use of the house would be as a vacation rental. The Gold Coast is where people are already going. Sure, we could be a pioneer in the growing tourism to the Southern Zone but more is unknown.
• A showstopper of a view requires a showstopper of a house. We already passed on a fully-built out $400,000 spec home. We would likely spend close to that here, and have a long time lag for building and finishing before we would see any return on it.
• Finally, the beauty of Ojochal is the mountainous, more undeveloped terrain but that also means driving everywhere (and challenging dirt road driving at that). I would never be able to visit on my own. Elderly friends and family would have a tough time and would need to be escorted everywhere.

We opted to start our Costa Rica journey with a small condo in the heart of the Gold Coast, walkable to everything. It suits our needs for a hassle-free, income-producing, and driverless vacation property. Now that we have two Gold Coast properties in our portfolio, maybe we’ll reconsider the Southern Zone. I’m afraid to look at where prices have gone even in just one year.

Do you think we made the right choice? Would you have bought the reliability of Tamarindo or the ruggedness of Ojochal?

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Check out our full series on Buying Our First Property In Costa Rica:

• Why We Chose Not To Buy In The Philippines
• Why We Chose The Gold Coast Over the Southern Zone (Current Post)
• Why We Passed On This $400,000 Vacation Rental
• Why We Chose The Convenient Center Over The Quiet Hills
• How We Financed Our First Costa Rica Property