Overall, we loved our stay at Casa Sunset; a few points to be aware of:
- 7 adults (three couples and a single)
- location was great, about 1.5hr South of Liberia airport by rental car, and only about 20-30 minutes away from Tamarindo. Don’t need to be a great driver to drive yourself, it’s fairly low stress/easy - speed limit in most places is 60km/hr - 80km/hr, so not very fast and is why it takes longer to get places.
- we HIGHLY recommend vehicle rental as the property is generally too far from things to rely on golf carts - they’d be too slow to get you where you need to go (Lola’s, Tam, grocery stores, etc., etc.).
- On top of that, golf carts are $420USD per week, per car, which is way too expensive considering we rented a large 7 passenger SUV for under $1k USD for the week stay (includes fuel).
- We rented vehicle online from Enterprise, who shuttles you from airport to rental place (~4 min drive), and then shuttles you back to airport on vehicle drop off. They open at 5am so wasn’t an issue with early morning flight time on the shuttle. It’s too far to walk and would be walking on busy highly. Process for vehicle rental worked out great, no issues, but was one of our stress points before arrival. Don’t need to worry, it’s easy.
- the beach club was not an option for us as the property cancelled their annual subscription due to cost/benefit, which is fine, but was just not communicated properly to us before we attempted to get into the club. We ended up just going to the beach instead which is fine.
- property itself is amazing, very modern, clean and tons to do. We spent a ton of time in the large pool, hot tub (not extremely hot but warmer than pool), and the cabana area with the bar, table for cards/games/eating, tv, and pool table. We bbq’d a lot - it worked well and was nice to know they had backup propane tank.
- indoor kitchen is good and had most of what we needed such as pots and pans and utensils.
- Costa Rica itself is beautiful and weather was a steady 32C-35C every day, no rain (Feb 3-10).It is an expensive country though (at least where we stayed) for almost everything: drinks and dining, groceries, and general goods(200ml bottle of sunscreen was nearly $30 which is insanity).
- property manager had great communication,no issues
- overall, if you are going to CR, would recommend the property to anyone - we loved it. Biggest tip though - rent a vehicle, skip the expensive golf carts, you won’t regret it.