This is Playa Flamingo, which is about a 20 minute drive north from Tamarindo. Its bay is more sheltered than Tamarindo, which makes it popular for sports fishing. As I mentioned yesterday, there is excellent sports fishing in the boats in Tamarindo Bay, and Flamingo offers additional sports fishing opportunities nearby.Playa Flamingo has a pretty bay and a small beach. There are a number of other small beaches in the area around Flamingo. There are a few hotels, restaurants and condos, as you can see in this photo. My wife and I prefer the much longer beach for walking and swimming and the much larger availability of restaurants, activities and shops in Tamarindo and Playa Langosta, but this is a matter of personal preference and some people prefer the Playa Flamingo area.
Costa Rica is adding marina facilities as part of its national commitment to continue to develop infrastructure for tourism. Playa Flamingo has a natural harbor behind the peninsula shown in this photo. (Some of the sports fishing boats are visible if you enlarge the photo.) The government put out for bid a marina development project for Playa Flamingo and the winning bid was a $90 million (USD) project that would include a cruise ship pier and a hotel, as well as a marina for private boats and yachts.
The companies who lost the bid have started legal action to challenge the winning bid, and the investment money for the winning bid was from U.S. business interests. The combination of the legal complications and the recession have created uncertainly about the project.
One also has to wonder how it would change the area if cruise ships start arriving nearby. I am sure that the businesses that own shops and run tourist activities would welcome the additional crowds, and the rest of us would make sure to plan our activities on days when the cruise ships are not in port.
There is a new marina that opened recently in the Gulf of Papagayo, a little further north.
6 comments:
There are quite a lot of nice boats in this photo!
I have added you to my blog roll of honour on my photoblog site. Roll on Photobloggers, great for dyslexics!
Having cruise ships come in will surely change the place in many ways, not all good. There are some places though that, but for the cruise ship business, the town would no longer exist.
Jarart,
You are right about the changes from cruise ship business. I would expect that cruise ships would cause more shops to be built right in Flamingo, but there is not enough there now to keep cruise ship people occupied, so there would be lots of excursions set up to meet the cruise ships.
Cruise ship passengers would be shuttled to the zip lines, National Parks for wildlife tours, the Guatil pottery village, and to Tamarindo for the shops, beach and restaurants. I would help businesses, help provide some tax revenue, but it would make the activities crowded on cruise ship days.
Cruise ship arrivals in this small town would most definately change the place and maybe not for the best. One of the things I enjoyed about my visit was the simplicity and small numbers of tourists.No doubt it would boost the economy.
The buildings have an excellent location. I can imagine the view from there, but I'm with you, I also prefer spots far from hotels and lodges to spend the day. Allways far from the crowd! :-)
Back to the agaves, we have several species quite addapted in the wild, being a. americana, a. americana 'marginata' and a green one (maybe a. ferox) the most common, although you can find many a. attenuata and a. filifera(?) too. I have kept them all and some more, the problem is they grow too much to be in my terrace, as I'm living in an apartment now...
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