Dominical
A surf town five minutes north. Board rental, a Friday market, and the coast road out of town.
The Costa Ballena · South Pacific, Costa Rica
Dominicalito
Rainforest that runs to the sea, rivers you can swim in, and two small towns either side.
In one paragraph
Where Dominicalito is
Dominicalito is a small coastal village in the canton of Osa, on Costa Rica's South Pacific coast. It sits in the province of Puntarenas, five minutes south of Dominical and fifteen minutes north of Uvita.
This stretch of coast is called the Costa Ballena, the whale coast. Steep green ridges come down to the water, rivers cut through them, and the Costanera Sur runs along the shore joining one small town to the next.
It stays rural. The forest is the loudest thing here, and most of what you need is a fifteen minute drive away.
Getting here
How you reach this coast
Most people fly into San José and drive south. The road crosses the mountains, drops through palm plantations, and meets the sea at Dominical.
Small airstrips at Quepos and Palmar Sur shorten the trip for anyone who would rather fly it. Travel times move with the weather and the road, so treat these as a guide.
The coast at a glance
- Province
- Puntarenas, canton of Osa
- The coast
- Costa Ballena, Costa Rica's South Pacific
- Nearest towns
- Dominical, 5 minutes · Uvita, 15
- From San José
- About four hours by road
- Small airstrips
- Quepos to the north · Palmar Sur to the south
- The road
- The Costanera Sur runs the whole coast
Within reach
What is around Dominicalito
Uvita
The larger town, fifteen minutes south. Supermarkets, clinics, banks and the national park.
Marino Ballena
The national park at Uvita, where a sandbar shaped like a whale's tail appears at low tide.
Nauyaca Waterfalls
Two falls in the hills behind Dominical, reached on foot, on horseback or by truck.
Weekly markets
Ferias along the coast where the fruit, fish and vegetables come from a few valleys away.
The Osa
South of here the peninsula begins, some of the densest rainforest left on the planet.
The year here
Two seasons, and the whales
The dry season runs from around December into April. Mornings are bright, the rivers run low and clear, and the dust settles on the coast road.
The green season runs from about May into November. Mornings usually stay open and the rain arrives in the afternoon, hard and warm, then leaves. Everything grows.
Humpback whales pass this coast twice a year, which is how it got its name. One group comes up from the south around the middle of the year, another down from the north towards the end of it.
Our place in it
Where Amora sits above the coast
Amora is on the ridge above Dominicalito, over 100 hectares of primary and secondary rainforest with the Pacific in view. The beach is a ten minute walk from the land.
Rivers run through the forest into waterfalls you can swim in. Most of the land stays forest, and over 1,500 fruit trees and native hardwoods are already in the ground.
The coast around us is rich twice over: in the life the forest holds, and in the communities and regenerative places already at work here.
Next step
Come walk the land with us
We run a land tour by car and a weekly potluck, and both are open to visitors. Reading first is fine too: what a regenerative village is, or the practical side of living in Costa Rica.