When researching places to visit in Costa Rica, we came across Playa Conchal. A beach made of shells! This video , from the travel blog My Tan Feet, also got us interested in checking it out. Since the video was taken, there’s been some major beach erosion, so we were not able to drive onto Playa Brasilito as they do in the video (jump to 2:19).
Instead, we had to leave our rental car, Blue, parked on what I perceived to be a sand bank, and then walk the rest of the way to Playa Conchal. Only people with SUVs could really drive all the way there, or extremely brave souls who weren’t concerned about getting their car stuck in sand.
After parking the car, we gathered up all our stuff – cooler, tent, towels, bags of sunscreen and snacks, and headed off to walk across Playa Brasilito to Playa Conchal. It was strange to me that Playa Brasilito was basically just a road to get to Conchal.
After walking across Brasilito, we entered a wooded area and the road narrowed and went up over a little hill, and there we were in Conchal. Immediately locals began approaching us to sell us drinks or to rent us shade tents. I’m sure they looked at me and thought “Damn, this whitey is going to need some shade!”
We fended off their offers and made our way onto the beach. There were a lot more people here than at Hermosa. There’s a Westin Resort too, so there was an area set up with lounge chairs and tents for the guests. We found a somewhat secluded spot beneath some trees and set up our tent.
Cautiously, we removed our shoes. How would walking on billions of shell fragments feel? Not bad, it turns out! The shell pieces are worn very smooth. It’s not as soft as walking on sand, but not as jagged and uncomfortable as one would imagine.
The water at Playa Conchal is that gorgeous turquoise color everyone imagines when they think of beach resort vacations. I really don’t know how Conchal could be covered with shells and have turquoise water while right next door Brasilito is just regular old sand and regular blue/gray ocean water color.
After a little while we noticed the tide was creeping closer and closer to our tent, until finally a wave nearly washed it out. We quickly dragged it higher up the beach and deeper into the trees. Which made our view even more interesting…
All through the day, locals kept stopping by to ask if we would like to buy pipa fria (chilled coconut), pottery, flutes, jewelry, and even massages. A guy came by to try to entice us to rent out his jet skis, and another offered a boat ride. We declined all of them. We just wanted to chill on the beach and not spend any money!
The waves were rougher than we had expected, perhaps that was due to Otto still swirling about offshore, I don’t know. We examined handfuls of shells to see if we could find any intact ones. We didn’t, but the small, worn out pieces were pretty neat to look at and try to figure out what they once were.
We decided to wrap it up around 3:30 or so – even though Playa Conchal is only 20 miles away from Playas del Coco, it takes over an hour to get from one place to the other. When we got back to Hotel Chantel and took a shower, we found tiny pieces of seashells stuck EVERYWHERE on our bodies. It was possibly even worse than trying to get sand off your body.
For dinner that evening, we wanted to go to an Italian restaurant. As we didn’t have GPS or cell service, I’d taken to using Waze at the hotel and then screen-shotting the route so we could still find our way. Well, in this case, it did not help. It was like the place didn’t even exist. We figured out later that it wasn’t open that night.
Instead, we ended up going to to one of the sports bars that’s in Playas del Coco. It was called Zi Lounge and it was good. It was relatively quiet and our waitress was attentive. We really weren’t impressed with Playas del Coco in general. There was a lot of American influence – lots of ex-pats and lots of sports bars with loud music and loud American TV. After we ate dinner, we just drove back to the hotel, up in the quiet hills, and relaxed by ourselves.
Introvert life!
Next up: We take a day off from the beach and go spelunking instead!
Uncommon Heather 