By the time December arrives, you already know exactly what kind of holiday season you’d like to enjoy.
Maybe it looks like stealing a few days away before the holidays fully arrive, to refresh and refuel for the festivities ahead. Or maybe you decide this is the year you skip tradition and head somewhere warm, where you don’t have to host and the Pacific’s waves are your only holiday soundtrack. Either way, December gives you a wonderful excuse to step out of the usual and into a few days of something different.
At Santarena, we love the idea of building those days around experiences that show you more than one side of Costa Rica. For example, you might pair one experience that brings you deep into the wildlife, food, and cultural traditions of Guanacaste (our province) with another that gives you the version of Costa Rica you probably pictured before you ever booked the flight: tropical coastline, warm Pacific water, a catamaran hammock beneath you, and the sun dropping into the horizon.
And both give you something worth remembering.
Why Is Our Palo Verde Riverboat Experience So Memorable?
Our Wildlife Observation Riverboat Trip & Culture experience is one of those outings that delves so much deeper than you might expect.
Your first stop, Palo Verde National Park, has an extraordinary concentration of biodiversity, and the wildlife is what makes the experience immediately engaging. Birds are everywhere. Herons and other water birds move along the river and through the trees. Iguanas appear along the banks. Crocodiles surface. Monkeys make themselves known.
Nothing in nature is guaranteed, of course, but there’s so much life concentrated in this landscape that you find yourself constantly looking around to see what appears next.
And the beauty of the riverboat is how comfortable the whole experience is. You’re seated. You’re shaded. You’re moving slowly through the landscape with a guide who knows where to look and what you’re seeing. You can simply settle in and enjoy it.
Dedicated birders will find plenty to love here, but the experience is just as engaging if you’ve never downloaded a birding app in your life. You don’t have to know the names of every species to appreciate how incredible it feels to have wildlife popping up all around you. It’s unmistakably Costa Rican!
What makes the day especially good, though, is that Palo Verde is only the beginning.
After your immersion in nature, you head to Ortega, where Doña Katia welcomes you into her home for lunch and shares her way of preparing traditional corn tortillas. It’s warm, personal, and again, very Costa Rican. You’re sitting in someone’s home, eating homemade food, and experiencing something rooted in daily life rather than staged for visitors.
From there, the experience continues to Guaitil, a town with deep Chorotega indigenous roots and a long tradition of pottery-making.
This is such an engaging, memorable part of the day because you get to see a craft that is still practiced in a traditional way and has been passed down through generations. The pottery of Guaitil is famous throughout Costa Rica, and there’s something very special about seeing where it comes from, how it’s made, and the cultural tradition behind it.
It also gives you the opportunity to bring home something much more personal than a generic souvenir. If you find a piece you love, you know where it came from. You saw the place. You learned about the tradition. You may even have shaken the hand that created it. Your souvenir becomes part of your story and your trip.
The Catamaran Tour: A Quintessential Costa Rica Experience
One of our most popular experiences (for a reason!), a catamaran tour is a completely different kind of day – and every bit as memorable.
Hands down, this is the Costa Rica you probably dream about before you arrive. Because by December, Guanacaste is typically settling into picture-perfect blue skies, sunshine, warm weather, and those gorgeous clear Pacific days that make being out on the water an almost irresistible proposition.
Head out along the coast with tropical water below you and mountains rising inland. Even before you do anything else, it feels special. It’s picturesque. It’s beautiful. It’s different. And there’s something wonderfully indulgent about cruising along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica with nowhere else you need to be.
Then the catamaran stops so you can swim, snorkel, or simply get out onto the Pacific for a while. Depending on the outing and equipment available, you may also be able to get on a stand-up paddle board or kayak. Light bites and drinks are served onboard, and the afternoon has that lovely quality of letting you decide what sounds good in the moment.
Maybe you want to be in the water. Maybe you want to stretch out on the boat and take in the coastline. Maybe you do a little of both. You choose.
And eventually, the light begins to change. It’s something we almost can’t describe, because no matter how many sunsets you’ve seen from land, the moment you’re even a little bit offshore, the whole experience is somehow bigger. The horizon seems to stretch farther. The color surrounds you instead of simply appearing in front of you. The sun feels almost close enough to hold in your hands, and the horizon feels like you could reach out and touch it with your fingertips.
Of course, it’s still the same sunset. But your mind and heart experience it differently when there’s nothing between you and that enormous Pacific horizon.
December at Santarena, Shaped Around You
The days out are important, but so is where you come home to afterward. At Santarena, we can help you shape your stay around how you want to travel. Your room choice reflects how much space you want, how you like to settle in, and what feels right for your trip.
And Santarena itself gives you plenty to enjoy between experiences. Our architecture is part of the character of the stay, with thoughtful details and spaces connected to the town around us. Downstairs, Ponciana Restaurant and Ponciana Bar make it easy to settle in for breakfast, a drink, or dinner, indoors or outside.
And Playa Danta is literally just a few steps out the door, giving your stay a lovely sense of flow. You can head out for a full day at Palo Verde and come back for dinner at Ponciana. Spend an afternoon on the catamaran and return with salt still on your skin. Take your coffee upstairs, head to the rooftop, walk through Beach Town, or step back onto the sand.
Our concierge team can also help arrange the experiences that make sense for the kind of December you want. Maybe that means a few days away before the holidays. Maybe it means spending the holiday itself here. However you choose to spend your December, the point is simply to make it your own.
Wildlife on the river. Homemade tortillas. Chorotega pottery. An afternoon on the Pacific. Sunset from the water. Dinner downstairs. Playa Danta outside the door. That all sounds like a December worth remembering.
