Where to stay in Dominical Costa Rica

Part 1 – Arriving

Dominical’s claim to fame has historically been its world class surfing beach, Playa Dominical, or Dominical Beach. Now Dominical’s appeal to travelers has diversified to the extent that the little town has become a world class vacation destination of a rather unique sort.

Things haven’t really changed that much here over the last 13 years (since 1999), the time that I’ve been living in and around Dominical Costa Rica. The town is still pretty much made up of one main street that remains unpaved and varies in quality depending on when the last grading was done (and how much rain has fallen recently). The locals like it this way since it keeps traffic driving slow, and it has the side benefit of helping vacationers from more harried lifestyles to slow down in other more philosophical ways.

Dominical is shaped (loosely) like a slice of pizza, oddly enough with the town being at the pointy end of the slice. The rough outline of our pizza slice is drawn by the ocean on one side, the coastal mountain range on the other, and the Baru river at its narrowest point. The southerly part is where the coastal mountain range closes back towards the ocean.