Guanacaste Nights Returns to Las Catalinas

¡Bomba!

Let the marimba play (Que suene la marimba),

let every heart rejoice (que baile el corazón);

Guanacaste is ready to celebrate (Guanacaste está de fiesta),

her historic and free choice (por su libre decisión).

The spirit of Guanacaste, our beloved province, is the sound of marimba music drifting through a plaza. It’s the bright sweep of traditional skirts during our traditional Punto Guanacasteco dance, the rhythm of clapping hands keeping time, and the quick wit of a bomba – part rhyme, part chant, called out in the middle of the music.

It’s the smell of handmade tortillas searing on a wood-fired comal. It’s maíz pujagua (purple corn); chicha (a fermented corn drink); gallos (tortillas piled high with toppings); and recipes carried across generations. It’s the pride of our sabanero cowboy culture, rooted in generations of open land, cattle country, horsemanship, hard work, and deep belonging.

Guanacaste is Costa Rican to the core and yet, it’s still so unmistakably itself.

That’s what we – all of Costa Rica, but particularly those of us who reside in Guanacaste – are celebrating this July: the history, the food, the music, the dance, the humor, the warmth, the neighbors, the families, the chefs, the local producers, the coastal towns, the traditions, and the deep love for a province that has helped shape Costa Rica’s national identity while keeping its own voice.

From July 24 through 26, Las Catalinas will welcome the third edition of Guanacaste Nights, a three-day celebration of local flavor, tradition, and community in honor of the 202nd anniversary of the Annexation of Guanacaste (July 25), known across Costa Rica as the Anexión de Nicoya or the Anexión del Partido de Nicoya.

Consider this your invitation to gather in the heart of Guanacaste’s North Pacific coast for a weekend filled with food, music, dance, local culture, and the kind of joy that belongs to everyone. Costa Ricans by birth. Costa Ricans by choice. Neighbors from Las Catalinas, Potrero, Flamingo, Tamarindo, and across the province. Visitors from around Costa Rica. And travelers just like you, who believe in a more authentic type of travel – who want to understand why Guanacaste is such a deeply beloved part of Costa Rica.

Come for the whole weekend, and let the celebration unfold around you. Come for the day that calls to you most. Stay in Las Catalinas, or come in for the event. However you arrive, Guanacaste Nights is open to you.

 

Guanacaste Nights: Three Days of Fire, Flavor, Music, and Pride

This July, Guanacaste Nights returns to Las Catalinas for its third edition, bringing together the food, culture, music, and community spirit of the province in a three-day celebration.

It’s the best of Guanacaste, celebrated from the North Pacific coast and the heart of Guanacaste itself: ancestral ingredients and chef-led cooking, marimba and traditional dance, local producers, street food, neighbors, visitors, and the joy of gathering together for the biggest day of the year in Guanacaste.

The weekend is designed so you can experience it your way. Stay for all three days and let the celebration become a full Guanacaste weekend, or come for the one moment that most calls to you.

Friday, July 24: Sunset Dinner at Sentido Norte

The celebration begins at Sentido Norte with an intimate five-course sunset dinner inspired by Guanacaste’s ancestral cooking traditions.

This opening night is the most elegant expression of the weekend: fine dining with a Guanacaste soul, served as the sun sets over the Pacific. The menu will reimagine familiar flavors, local ingredients, and culinary memories through a thoughtful, elevated lens.

In the spirit of Guanacaste’s finest traditions, this dinner is firmly rooted in place. It’s a full celebration of the view, the ingredients, the history, the timing of sunset, and the sense that the weekend is opening with reverence for everything Guanacaste has brought to the table.

Time: 4:30 PM to 9:30 PM

Location: Sentido Norte, Casa Chameleon

Price: $160 per person

Saturday, July 25: Street Food Fair and Live Music in Town

Saturday is the heart of the celebration.

On the day of the Anexión de Nicoya itself, Las Catalinas will gather in Beach Town for a joyful street food fair filled with food and drink stations, participating chefs, live music, marimba, traditional dancers, and the open-air energy of Guanacaste at its most festive.

Think of it as a giant Guanacaste block party, but with professional chefs, elevated dishes, and the flavors of the province at the center. It’s lively, generous, musical, delicious, and open to everyone. Families, neighbors (both from Las Catalinas and our neighboring towns!), visitors, residents, locals, and travelers will gather around the same celebration, sharing in the food, music, dance, and pride of July 25.

This is the night for movement. For clapping hands. For marimba. For plates passed between friends. For watching traditional skirts spin. For neighbors running into neighbors. For visitors realizing that Guanacaste is not something to simply observe, but something to feel and experience and love.

Time: 4:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Location: Las Catalinas Town

Price: $75 adults / $30 kids

Sunday, July 26: Farewell Market

On Sunday, the weekend closes with a warm, unhurried farewell market in Las Catalinas.

This final day is rooted in local producers and the flavors of Guanacaste. It’s your chance to slow down after Saturday’s celebration, and to browse, taste, meet makers, and take something of the province home with you.

The feeling is closer to a feria (open-air market), but with the special spirit of Guanacaste Nights: local, flavorful, celebratory, and connected to the people who grow, make, cook, and share the region’s food traditions.

Time: 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM

Location: Las Catalinas Town

Entrance: Free

Guanacaste Nights: The Full Weekend Package

For guests who want to experience all three days, the full Guanacaste Nights package is available for $235 per person, taxes included.

Stay for the Weekend or Come for the Day

Guanacaste Nights is open to everyone, from residents and guests of Las Catalinas, to day-trippers here for a great celebration.

You don’t have to stay overnight to attend. You don’t have to attend all three days. You’re welcome to register for the experience that most excites you, whether that’s the sunset dinner at Sentido Norte, the July 25 street food fair and live music celebration, the Sunday farewell market, or the full weekend.

But if you can stay, stay.

Wake up in Las Catalinas and walk to the celebration. Let Friday’s sunset dinner become the start of a memorable weekend. Let Saturday fill the town with music, food, dance, and Guanacaste pride. Let Sunday close slowly, with local producers, flavors to take home, and one more morning in the province we’re so grateful to call home.

Las Catalinas Doorway can help you plan your stay for Guanacaste Nights, from handpicked homes and flats to the beachfront Santarena Hotel. Stay close to the celebration, walk through town, gather with friends and family, and experience the weekend as it was meant to be experienced: fully, easily, and together.

Why July 25 Means So Much in Guanacaste

Every year on July 25, Costa Rica celebrates one of the most meaningful dates in its national history: the Annexation of Guanacaste, aka the Annexation of the Partido de Nicoya.

For many international visitors, this may be your first time hearing that Guanacaste was not always part of Costa Rica. Before the modern province became what it is today, the region had its own political and cultural history, shaped by geography, trade, neighboring territories, and the lives of the people who called this land home.

But in 1824, just three years after Central America gained its independence from Spain, the people of Nicoya and Santa Cruz voted and chose to join the fledgling state of Costa Rica. That choice is remembered through one of the country’s most beloved patriotic phrases:

“De la Patria por Nuestra Voluntad”

Literally, it means “of the homeland by our will,” but its feeling is warmer, deeper, and more powerful than a direct translation can hold. It means belonging to the homeland by our own choice. It means identity chosen freely. It means love, not obligation.

That’s why July 25 isn’t simply a historic anniversary; in Guanacaste, it’s a day of pride. It’s a day of memory. It’s a celebration of a community that democratically chose Costa Rica and, in doing so, became inseparable from the country’s soul.

Just over two centuries later, the Anexión de Nicoya is still felt in the music, the food, the dances, the language, the traditions, and the unmistakable orgullo guanacasteco (Guanacastecan pride) that fills our province every July 25.

To celebrate the Annexation is to celebrate Guanacaste herself.

Guanacaste: Both Costa Rican and Beautifully Its Own

Guanacaste belongs deeply to Costa Rica, but anyone who has spent time here knows that the province has its own, distinct cultural heartbeat.

It’s there in the marimba (akin to a large, wooden xylophone), whose bright notes can turn a plaza into a dance floor. It’s there in the food, so much of it rooted in maize and the traditional kitchen. It’s there in the sabanero, the Guanacaste cowboy whose world of horses, cattle, open fields, leather, and hard work remains one of the province’s defining symbols. It’s there in the bomba, called out regularly with wit and rhythm during celebration. It’s there in the Punto Guanacasteco, one of Costa Rica’s most recognizable traditional dances, full of flirtation, movement, color, and pride.

For those who grew up in Costa Rica, these traditions are familiar from school festivals, civic celebrations, family memories, and July 25 festivities. For visitors, they open a door into something essential: Guanacaste is not only beaches and sunshine. It’s a culture, a history, a kitchen, a rhythm, a way of gathering, a heritage, and a way of belonging.

That’s the heart of Guanacaste Nights. This is not a performance of culture from a distance, but a celebration rooted in the place where we live, the province we love, and the traditions that continue to bring people together.

The Flavor of Guanacaste: Maize, Fire, and Memory

To understand Guanacaste, you have to come to the table.

Food here carries history. It carries family. It carries the hands of people who learned from mothers, grandmothers, neighbors, cooks, farmers, and communities where recipes were shared long before they were written down.

Maize is at the center of so much of that tradition. In Guanacaste, corn isn’t just an ingredient, but a foundation.

It appears in tortillas palmeadas, so named because they’re shaped in the palm of your hand, and cooked on a traditional cast-iron comal. It appears in gallos, where a fresh tortilla becomes the base for any number of savory and satisfying meat-and-vegetable toppings. It appears in chicheme and chicha, traditional corn-based drinks. It appears in rosquillas, tanelas, tamal asado, arroz de maíz, and other corn-based foods that speak to the depth of Guanacaste’s culinary memory.

One of the most beautiful examples is maíz pujagua, or purple corn, known for its deep color and its connection to traditional recipes. Even the name feels like a reminder that Guanacaste’s food culture is not generic, but specific. It has roots. It has color. It has memory.

This is part of what makes the food of Guanacaste so moving, because it can be both humble and celebratory at once. A tortilla can be simple, but it can also hold generations. A drink can be refreshing, but it can also carry the story of choice, land, and tradition. A plate can be delicious, but it can also tell you where you are.

At Guanacaste Nights, this culinary memory becomes an integral part of our celebration: ancestral flavors, local ingredients, participating chefs, food and drink stations, street food, and a weekend dedicated to honoring the richness of the province through what we cook, serve, share, and remember.

The Sound of Guanacaste: Marimba, Bombas, and Clapping Hands

If food is how Guanacaste remembers, music is how Guanacaste rejoices.

The marimba is inseparable from that joy. Its sound is bright, wooden, percussive, and instantly recognizable – a music that feels made for plazas, festivals, dances, and warm nights. In Guanacaste, marimba is part of the emotional architecture of celebration.

Then come the bombas.

For English-speaking visitors, a bomba can be difficult to explain until you hear one. It’s part rhyme, part chant, part joke, part declaration, part interruption, and complete tradition. Someone calls out “¡Bomba!” and the music gives way for a short verse, often playful, clever, romantic, teasing, patriotic, or full of local pride.

A bomba is a little burst of joy in the middle of the party.

It might make you laugh. It might make you clap. It might make you answer back. It might remind everyone that Guanacaste’s culture lives not only in formal history, but also in humor, timing, voice, and community.

For Guanacaste Nights, this matters because our celebration is not only about watching and observing; it’s about immersing yourself and feeling the rhythm of the province swirl around you. The marimba, the dancers, the clapping, the music, the food, the voices, the movement through town… all of it belongs to the same living tradition.

The Dance of Guanacaste: Punto Guanacasteco

No celebration of Guanacaste would feel complete without dance.

The Punto Guanacasteco is one of Costa Rica’s most beloved traditional dances, and for good reason: It’s joyful, graceful, flirtatious, and full of color. The movement of the skirts is part of the beauty, but so is the conversation between dancers, the rhythm of the music, the pride in the costume, and the sense that everyone watching knows they’re witnessing something deeply tied to national memory.

For visitors, the Punto Guanacasteco offers a visual entry point into Guanacaste’s culture. You don’t need to know every step to understand the feeling. You can see the pride in the dancers’ postures. You can hear it in the way the musicians play. You can feel it in the way the crowd responds.

This is tradition in motion.

And during Guanacaste Nights, that sense of motion will help fill Las Catalinas with the festive spirit of July 25: music, dance, food, and community coming together in honor of a province that knows how to celebrate with its whole heart.

The Culture of Guanacaste: Sabanero Pride and the Guanacaste Spirit

Guanacaste’s cultural identity is also shaped by the sabanero, the cowboy figure tied to the province’s cattle ranching history, open landscapes, horses, leatherwork, and rural life.

The sabanero is more than a nostalgic image: In Guanacaste, he represents a real, and still current way of life marked by skill, endurance, land knowledge, and pride. He – and now, the woman sabanera, too – belongs to the history of haciendas and open fields, to early mornings, long days, strong horses, and the agricultural work that helped shape the region’s economy and identity.

In the wider Costa Rican imagination, the sabanero is one of Guanacaste’s great cultural symbols. Alongside the marimba, the tortilla, the bomba, and the Punto Guanacasteco, the cowboy helps explain why our province feels so distinct.

This is the Guanacaste that Guanacaste Nights honors: both coastal and rural, festive and hardworking, traditional and alive, proudly Costa Rican and proudly itself.

Register for Guanacaste Nights

This July 24 through 26, we invite you to celebrate Guanacaste with us. We’d be honored to welcome you.