How EXPENSIVE is a Costa Rica Beach Town? Playa Brasilito - Playa Conchal

And the other thing you have to watch out for is crocodiles. It's our last day in Brasilito Beach. Thought I would show you around the town of Brasilito. Start with the beach here. Early morning, so not too crowded yet. We're headed south, the southwest coast of Costa Rica today. It's about a four or five hour drive. And just wanted to talk about how expensive Brasilito Beach is. Show you around the town, what's available. This building actually, the roof got ripped off. This is like Indira Bar is the name of it. The roof got ripped off and Hurricane Nate poured the roof off of this place. But the bar is still open down below. They're still partying at the Indira Bar, despite that roof being torn off from Hurricane Nate earlier in the year. Had breakfast at the hotel, first time we had breakfast there. And I gotta say it was the worst typical Costa Rican meal that we've had since we've been here. It was like six bucks and it was not a lot of food, not very good. This was our view for breakfast, so you can't argue with that. So beautiful. In terms of beach communities, it's actually not that expensive. It seems to be like more of a popular local spot than with tourists. There is an expensive hotel at the beach with like $1,200 rooms. It's the Westin. A lot more local Costa Ricans seem to come to this beach community. So that kind of keeps the prices down a little bit. Here we have the central square. It's kind of the main area in the town. A few souvenir shops, a few sodas. Super Cindy over here, which is like a little convenience store. And actually, I was in there last night and I actually met Super Cindy. She was sitting there eating a popsicle. The Costa Rican snacks, I mean they had a rack of Costa Rican snacks for 100 colones. So that's like 20 cents for like a little bag of Costa Rican chips or like fried plantain chips or whatever. And then a dollar for a soda. And then the beer seemed a little more expensive. But if you go with the local snacks, like the Costa Rican snacks, they're going to be a lot cheaper than like a brand name American, like Global, Dorito or whatever. And then the same is true with the restaurants around here. Like this place, we went in and almost ate dinner there the other night, a little soda. And the prices were a little bit less than our hotel. But I'm sure the food would have been a lot better and also bigger portions. That's the thing when you get like the gallo pinto or the rice and beans, they give you a bunch. And most places, it's like as much as you want. They'll just keep refilling it. So that's what I like about it. Last night, we went to that Italian place, La Sodita Italiana. And we just got some pizza. Pizza was like $10 for a pizza. A cheese pizza was $9 or 4,500 colones. Our meal was disturbed by some high maintenance American girls who every time they saw a grasshopper, they would scream bloody murder as if they're being attacked by a crocodile. So that was a little annoying. That was our expensive meal for the trip. It was pretty expensive. I think the bill ended up being like $40 US, which is the most we've spent on a meal since we've been in Costa Rica. There's a seafood place down here that we checked out, which is right on the beach. And the prices were pretty expensive as well. It was like $20 for a fish dinner. So this was the seafood place we went. Camaron Dorado. Pretty expensive. It's a nice spot right on the beach. So beautiful. You can watch the sunset and stuff. The Italian place is like out of town. It's like almost like a 20-minute walk out of town that way. Headed north on the road. $6 for half a watermelon. On the outskirts of town, heading out of town. A little fruit stand on the side of the road. It would probably be a half that or a quarter of that for price. That's the thing with shopping in touristy spots. You got to kind of know what the regular price is. If you stick to local joints like the sodas, I mentioned in other videos, but those are the traditional kind of like a little diner. Like a lot of people will run a soda out of their house. You'll see a sign for a soda and it's just like somebody's kitchen in their house. But you know, that's where you're going to get the best food at the cheapest prices. It's by the side of the road, a little soda, a little sign. It says ceviche or comida tipica, typical food. Ceviche is a popular dish down here. A lot of people. They had guys selling it on the beach yesterday. Brasilito Beach. There's deals to be had. Like, you know, the place we stayed in last night, $30 for a beachfront room. Didn't have AC, but it wasn't actually too hot last night. Low season, which is September, October. I've heard that the beaches are empty. And the room prices are even cheaper. $20 a night to be on the beach. Nobody there. Like it's a little rainier. So the rivers probably have more flow, which is going to make the beach water a little murkier. And the other thing you have to watch out for on beaches where they have rivers emptying into them is crocodiles. It's a big problem. Not so much in this area, but a little further north in Tamarindo. They've had crocodile attacks because the crocodiles will, you know, right where the river empties into the ocean, the crocodiles will hang out. That's where they'll grab somebody swimming in the water. So something, anytime you're at a beach in Costa Rica and there's rivers emptying into it, especially with higher flow rivers, you want to be on the lookout for crocodiles. Check the news, see if there's been any crocodile attacks lately. We talked to some local people in this area. There's just a small little trickle like on one of the rivers here. And so there's not any crocodiles in this area. Brasilito over to Playa Conchal, there hasn't been any crocodiles. But north in Tamarindo, pure life, pure life. That's what I love about Costa Rica, man. It's all good. Pura vida. It's kind of like another way of saying it's all good, you know. I find actually that it's kind of a gross generalization. I don't know if you could apply, you could probably apply it to most countries, but I find that like the people that speak English are usually in the tourism industry. And that's kind of a good and a bad thing because I find like whenever I'm trying, when someone's trying to scam me, most of the time they also speak English. But the people that only speak Spanish, that I only speak Spanish with, they're a little more honest. I hate to say it, but they're a little more honest. And I have not been scammed, other than the guy yesterday who, you know, that was just miscommunication. He was yelling at us about taking his kayaks for the whole day. But you know, it wasn't our fault. The guy that had kind of sold us the package miscommunicated that to us. So he wasn't really trying to scam us, but plenty of horseback riding opportunities here. You can ride horses on the beach. You can ride ATVs on the beach. So lots of different things to do in terms of like activities, excursions. In terms of keeping it cheap though, you always want to try and book it separately from like a hotel or even a tour company. Walk up to a guy with horses and be like, hey, can I just ride the horse? It's going to be cheaper than if you book it through your hotel or through like an organized tour group. We saw a tour pamphlet on the front desk of the hotel we're staying at. And it was offering a tour to Rincon de la Vieja that we just did for like 150 bucks per person. And it cost us $15 to enter the park. Stuff like that. You know, obviously we have a lot more freedom because we have a rental car. But, you know, organized tours, they really, really jack up the price. Do your own thing. Scout it out on Google Maps, TripAdvisor, and just do your own thing. You're going to save a lot more money. So that's $15 a person versus $150 a person. Or like yesterday, you know, we just talked to the guy on the beach with the tent and the kayak. And that's, you know, if we had booked that through a hotel, who knows how much they would have charged. 100 bucks, 50 bucks. Still got it for 20 bucks. So there's deals to be had. You just got to be savvy. If you want to do a little bit of work on your own, you're going to get the better deal. I mean, if you just want to be lazy and sit back, you're going to be spending a lot more money. So here we got another little convenience store. It seems like all the convenience stores and prices are the same. Traditional souvenir. Then we're back around the other side of the square here. Some more souvenirs. Pretty much the main strip of Brasolito. And further up, like I said, there's some more restaurants. There's that Italian place we went to last night where we got the pizza. Pizza was actually really good, even though it was more expensive. We got another soda over here. The Coca Soda, which is right next to our hotel. Supposed to be the best in town. I haven't checked the prices yet. We haven't eaten there. It was closed when we went to eat there. So I heard this is the best soda in town. Yeah, here is the best soda. The best soda, right? Yeah. Yeah, all right. Mucho gusto. How are you? Good. So that meal, I had the typical gallo pinto with rice and beans and tortillas and pico de gallo and fried plantains. And then my wife had the shrimp tacos with french fries. And I had two watermelon juices, $16. Can't beat that, guys. Great deal. The Coca Soda is the cheapest, $2,000 for a typical breakfast. And if you want coffee with that, it's $2,200. So like $4.50 for breakfast. They open at 6 in the morning and then they close at 9.30 at night. So it's right next to our hotel. If you're staying in this area or Hotel Brasilito, I recommend Coca Soda. The food's better than this hotel and cheap. That's it for Brasilito. We're headed south down to Domenical, which is the southwestern part of Costa Rica. About a four or five hour drive. I don't know if we're going to stop anywhere on the way, but if we do, I'll take you there. Infamous.