STORY: Day Trip to Playa Dominical

Dominical is about 1.5 hours south of where we live in Playa Hermosa on the Central Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Its an easy day trip, so we decided to make the drive down and see what it is like. Dominical is known as a youthful surfer town with a very slow pace. This was the street scene as we turn the turn off the paved Costanera highway into Dominical.

We ran right into a traffic jam. Buses traveling to and from Panama on the Costanera come through Dominical. This traffic is only because a soccer (futbol) game was ending at the field just ahead. It is dry season here right now, so there is a lot of dust. Normally there wouldn't be many cars on the street.

We stopped at this San Clemente Restaurant and Bar for some great nachos and cervesa. They sell a great hot sauce called, "Spicy Mike's Hotter than Hades Hot Sauce." Ticos generally don't like their food too spicy hot. I loved the old VW Bus sign, so I had to take a couple of closeup photos of it.

I am amazed at how many of these old "hippie" buses are still on the road down here. I'd love to have one, but I already have a vehicle I'm working on (read my Jeep Saga post).

Oh, she's holding a bottle of Spicy Mike's! I just noticed that, maybe because I was suckered into looking elsewhere. Will the visual tricks on us never end?

The inside of San Clemente's is a lot of fun too. The ceiling is full of broken surf boards. I especially liked this tribute to the "Duke"on the way to the banos. 

There's lots of little shops up and down the street.

This one's called the "Green Room". It had a young surfer couple running the little store and coffee shop in the back. They were sitting around the patio and were friendly when we walked up. Their suntanned 12 year old son was sitting their too, and had just returned from a surfing competition in Playa Hermosa, where we live.

I was thinking I could live without the unpaved, dusty roads in Dominical during the dry season, but the beach was within a rock's throw of the main drag and I no longer need pavement anyway. Here are a few photos of the makeshift shops along this beach.

Lots of nice jewelry at low prices. Plenty of nice stuff actually. Some made on site and some imported from who knows where. A mixture of Ticos and Gringo "hippie types" selling hand-made souvenirs. It was like going back in time. There was a nice beach bar called, "Tortilla Flats" that I didn't get a shot of, but its listed in the top 50 world beach bars. We had a beer there. It wasn't the bar that was so fantastic, it was where it was sitting.

Here's the view out to the water. All just gorgeous.

Ice Cream vendors seem to be everywhere we go. We have one that pushes his little cart right down in front of our house everyday. Too tempting!

I got dizzy walking past all these booths. So much to buy for what seemed to me to not be that many customers. I'd say these people just barely squeak by.

So that's Dominical, sans much of anything to do about surfing. Someone else can write that post better than me, but surfing is a big deal here. Its a place we would love to visit once in a while, but we think we like a bit of a larger town to live near.