Bahía Junquillal and Playa Rajada: Two Nights by Campervan in the Guanacaste That Was Never Sold

The tourist map of Guanacaste tends to read the same way every time: a fixed hotel, a gated beach, a short drive between the two. There's another way to travel the region that rarely gets told, because it doesn't fit that format — the way of those who move by campervan, sleep wherever the landscape allows, and stay as long as the place asks them to, not as long as a reservation dictates.

That's what brought this team, in a campervan fitted with a rooftop tent, to the country's far northwest: the Bahía Junquillal National Wildlife Refuge and, a short drive away, Playa Rajada.

A refuge run by the community, not a private operator

The Bahía Junquillal National Wildlife Refuge was established in January 1995, protects 505 hectares of mangrove and dry forest, and its beach holds a three-star Bandera Azul Ecológica certification.¹

What sets Junquillal apart from the rest of the Guanacaste coast isn't just its status as a protected area — it's who runs it. Since November 2022, the refuge's tourism services, including the camping area, have been managed by Aso Junquillal, a local association from La Cruz, under an agreement with the Guanacaste Conservation Area.² It isn't a private operator or a hotel chain: it's a community-run model, in a province where that isn't the dominant pattern.

Camping here means slipping into a different rhythm. The camping area draws other travelers who move the same way — by campervan, without a fixed itinerary — and that coincidence produces something that wasn't in the plan: spontaneous help between strangers, road tips passed along, the feeling of landing inside a group rather than at a tourist site. For those trying this style of travel for the first time, it was the most unexpected part of the two nights spent there.

Playa Rajada: the one still left undeveloped

A short distance away, Playa Rajada is one of the last beaches in Guanacaste without large tourist developments, near the country's northern tip.³ White sand, calm waters, and — despite what July usually promises on the North Pacific — a full day of sunshine and a clear sunset, right in the middle of the green season.

What the campervan makes possible

Junquillal and Rajada don't have formal lodging nearby — no hotel around the corner, no boutique option close to the shore. In the fixed-tourism model, that leaves them off the map for most travelers. In a campervan, that absence stops being an obstacle: it becomes the reason to go.

The vehicle used on this trip was a rooftop-tent campervan from Costa Rider Campervan, which made it possible to sleep at the refuge's camping area rather than just pass through. It doesn't change what there is to say about the place — but it does change which places become accessible.

Northern Guanacaste isn't on the usual route, and that's likely why it still holds on to something the rest of the province has lost: a refuge managed by its own community, and a beach that doesn't yet share its name with a real estate development.

Place visited · Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre Bahía Junquillal y Playa Rajada, La Cruz, Guanacaste