Things to Do on Peninsula Papagayo: A Complete Guide
Seven beaches, a new 23-acre park, an Arnold Palmer course, and some of the best waves in Central America, all on 1,400 protected acres. Here is what is worth your time on Peninsula Papagayo, from the people who host guests there.
Peninsula Papagayo is 1,400 acres of protected coastline on Costa Rica's north Pacific, with seven beaches, eleven miles of shore, and one of the last remaining tropical dry forests on the planet. It is a rare piece of land. It is also, for a first-time visitor, a slightly confusing one, because the peninsula is not a resort and it is not a town. It is a private community with resorts inside it, and what you can actually do here depends a good deal on where you are staying and who is arranging it.
We manage villas on the peninsula, so this is the guide we would give a guest over coffee on their first morning. What is worth your time, what is easy to arrange, and what most people wish they had known before they arrived.
The Beaches
Start here, because most days do. The peninsula has seven beaches, and the difference between them matters more than the number suggests.
Nacascolo is the long white-sand beach on the gulf side, calm and shallow, the one many of our villas overlook. It is where boats launch, where the water is warm and flat, and where you will spend more time than you expect. The protected water makes it genuinely good for swimming with kids, which is not true of every beach in Guanacaste.
Prieta is a crescent of black sand and the peninsula's social center, home to most guest’s favorite beach club. Smaller coves scattered along the bluffs are where you go to find nobody at all. Snorkeling is good across most of them, with clear water and reliable marine life close to shore.
What we arrange most: beach club day passes. This is the single most requested thing our concierge books, and it is worth understanding why. The peninsula's beach clubs are ordinarily reserved for villa owners and members. As a guest of The Smart Villas you can access them through us, which means you get the pool, the service, and the setting as if you were a villa owner on the peninsula.
Papagayo Park
The peninsula's newest addition and the fastest way to fill a day with something for everyone. Papagayo Park opened in December 2025 as a 23-acre campus of courts, pools, studios, and casual dining, roughly a $26 million project built as a gathering place.
The short version: a racquet center with tennis, pickleball, and padel courts; a pool complex with waterslides and a poolside climbing wall; a pump track for bikes and skateboards; a splash pad and adventure playground for younger kids; a three-lane lap pool for uninterrupted swims; an art studio running instructor-led classes; an open-air shala called Espíra for wellness and sunsets; a bocce court, a basketball court, and a dog park. Patio Social handles the food and cocktails, and Cono Loco handles the ice cream.
It works because a family can split up without leaving. Kids on the pump track, a parent taking a padel lesson, a grandparent at bocce, everyone back together at Patio Social.
Read more: Papagayo Park: The New Center of Family Life on the Peninsula
Golf
The Ocean Course is an 18-hole, par-72 Arnold Palmer Signature course that winds through forest, valleys, and seacliffs, with ocean views from fourteen of its holes. It ranks among Golf Digest's top 100 courses outside the United States. White-faced monkeys in the trees overhead are a standard feature of the round, and a standard excuse for a bad one.
Access is arranged through the resorts and the club. If golf is a priority for your trip, tell us before you book so we can sort out tee times early, particularly in the dry season.
On the Water
The Gulf of Papagayo is the reason people come back.
Boat days are the other thing our concierge books constantly, and the one guests rank highest afterward. A private boat out of Nacascolo opens up the coastline: empty beaches you cannot drive to, snorkeling stops, sunset returns. Whales, dolphins, and turtles turn up often enough that you should be watching.
Sport fishing out of Marina Papagayo is world-class, with sailfish, marlin, tuna, and roosterfish depending on the season.
Diving and snorkeling cover more than twenty sites in the gulf, suited to every level.
Surfing deserves its own mention. Witch's Rock and Ollie's Point, two of the most storied waves in Central America, are a boat ride from Nacascolo Beach. Beginners learn in the gentle bays right here on the peninsula.
Read more: Surf Spots Near Papagayo: A Guide to Guanacaste's Best Waves
Wildlife and the Dry Forest
More than five percent of the world's known species live in Costa Rica, and the peninsula sits inside a biological corridor connected to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste. The 250-acre Palmares Preserve, protected wilderness right on the peninsula, is the heart of it.
Howler monkeys will wake you before your alarm. White-faced capuchins move through the trees at the edges of the villas. Iguanas sun themselves on the walls. Coatis, agoutis, and a startling range of birds are all routine. Guided outings with the peninsula's Explorers program cover the dry forest, the bluffs, and the coastline with naturalists who can tell you what you are looking at.
The tropical dry forest is genuinely rare, rarer than rainforest, and it transforms between seasons. Green and dense from May through November, spare and golden through the dry months, when wildlife concentrates around water and becomes far easier to see.
Eating
There are sixteen signature restaurants on the peninsula, spanning the Four Seasons, the Nekajui Ritz-Carlton Reserve, Andaz, the beach clubs, and Papagayo Park. That is a lot of range for a piece of land this size, and it means you can eat very well without leaving.
The other thing we arrange constantly: in-home chefs. For a lot of our guests this ends up being the best meal of the trip. A chef comes to the villa, cooks for your group, and you eat on the terrace as the sun goes down, with no drive and no reservation and no one checking a watch. For families with young kids or groups celebrating something, it beats a restaurant every time.
Read more: Where to Eat on Peninsula Papagayo: A Villa's Host Guide
Wellness
In-home massages round out the list of most-booked services. A therapist comes to the villa. You do not go anywhere afterward.
Beyond that, the peninsula's spas, the Espíra shala at the park, and the MoveStrong outdoor fitness stations along the jungle's edge cover most of what people want.
Getting Around
This is the practical thing most guests do not think about until they arrive.
Golf carts are available to rent for all of our guests, and we recommend them without reservation. The peninsula is spread out. Walking between the villa, the park, the beach, and dinner is not realistic in the heat. A cart makes the whole place feel small, and it is one of the small pleasures of staying here.
Airport transportation is the fourth thing our concierge handles as a matter of course. Liberia International (LIR) is about 30 to 45 minutes away. We can have a driver waiting rather than leaving you to sort out a rental counter after a flight.
When to Come
The dry season runs roughly December through April: reliable sun, light crowds on the water, best conditions for golf and boat days, and the easiest wildlife viewing. It is also peak season, and it books early.
The green season, May through November, brings afternoon rain rather than all-day rain, a landscape that turns dramatically green, larger surf, fewer people, and better rates. Mornings are usually clear. It is our favorite time to be here, though we understand why most people choose the other one.
How We Think About It
The peninsula gives you the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton on one side and eleven miles of empty coastline on the other. Most visitors pick a resort and get the first without much of the second.
Staying in a villa is the way to have both. You get the space, the kitchen, the private pool, and a concierge who books everything, the beach club passes, the chef, the massage, the boat, and the airport pickup, so the peninsula's amenities are available to you without the peninsula's crowds. That is the entire idea behind The Smart Villas, and it is why our guests tend to come back.
Some places deserve more than a hotel. If you are planning a trip, reach out through thesmartvillas.com and we will help you match a villa to your group and build the days around what you actually want to do.
Let us craft something extraordinary.
Arrange a consultation with our team. We'll understand what you need, then tailor a residence and itinerary to fit — usually within a few hours.
Frequently asked questions.
Everything you need for a seamless stay
The Smart Villas is a curated collection of luxury villas, not a marketplace. That means no platform fees, no service charges, and no algorithm deciding what you see. Booking directly with us typically saves guests 12–15% compared to the same property listed on Airbnb or VRBO.
Every home is individually selected, and every stay is concierged by our team from arrival to departure. Guests don't deal with an app or a call center. They deal with people who know these homes personally and handle every detail — transfers, restaurant reservations, local experiences — as a baseline, not an add-on.
Staying in a Smart Villa means you get the full Papagayo resort experience without being confined to one property.
Golf cart to the Four Seasons for dinner. Walk to the Ritz-Carlton Reserve for a spa treatment. Hit the Arnold Palmer Golf Course in the morning, come home to your private pool in the afternoon. The beach clubs, the restaurants, the activities, all of it is accessible.
You're just not paying resort prices to sleep in a hotel room when you could have an entire home. The guests who choose a villa aren't skipping the resort experience. They're adding to it.
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