Shopping In Tamarindo

The town of Tamarindo lies on the northwest coast of Costa Rica on the Pacific Ocean.  Its normal population is only about 500 people but can swell to 5000 on weekends and holidays.  It is known for surfing and for the Leatherback Turtles.  Unfortunately, the turtles are extremely endangered and rarely seen anymore.  We were told by one local that only thirty two of them were counted last year.

The town is configured with one street running parallel to the beach and multiple streets running perpendicular to that one away from the beach—none of them have names or house numbers.  Our condo is on one of these perpendicular streets  

About half way between our condo and the beach is a grocery store called the Super Compro.  It also has the medical clinic above it.

It is convenient and has just about everything we need on a daily basis.   

This is milk on the shelf.

The vegetable are excellent.

There is a very good variety of alcohol in addition to all of the items in the coolers.

If there happens to be a “North American” item we just can’t do without, we can walk a couple miles down the beach road and go to the Auto Mercado.  This is a very nice grocery store, a little higher priced, with just about everything we have back home.  It is designed with a “Mall” type entry with a beautiful fish pond.

The street along the beach is lined with souvenir shops, restaurants, and some hotels.  The souvenir shops have all kinds of local crafts and trinkets.  Almost all of them are printed with Costa Rica and “Pura Vida”.  “Pura Vida” literally means “Pure Life” although the real meaning in Spanish is something like “Awesome”, “Going Great”, “Full of Life”, or “Cool”.  It is used as both a greeting and a farewell and has been adopted throughout Costa Rica as a national slogan.

There are all kinds of shops that carry clothes,

And jewelry,

and pottery,

And wood.

Off the beach a little, there are “malls”.

There are also banks, book stores, pharmacies, etc.  

Somebody must use a lot of Cialis!

This is just a sample of the shopping that is available here.  About the only thing not here is a gas station but then we are walking or taking a bus or taxi every place we need to go. 

All of this is in addition to the shops that sell or rent all kinds of surfing equipment and there are more of these than anything else.