Few Clothing Options
During my years living here in Costa Rica, I have found that there are very few clothing options around. You don’t really wear anything except swimsuits and a tank maybe the occasional t-shirt. this does, however, change if you are living inland though. There you will find its a lot cooler so you will wear more long sleeves and pants. But when shopping in Tamarindo you don’t have much to choose from. I have lived in the Tamarindo area my whole time here and the clothing shops are really all the same thing just with different price tags.
The most used shops in Tamarindo for me personally are Arenas and Auto Mercado, other than that I just bring clothes from the states when I travel back from vacation which is not very often. Due to this, I have had to find other ways of getting clothes, so I asked my friends and any locals I knew what I should do. What I got told by many people was to go to Santa Cruz!
Santa Cruz Option
Now for those of you who don’t know Santa Cruz is a very beautiful town about thirty minutes outside of Tamarindo where you can find a much wider selection of just about everything. So I hoped in my Jeep with some friends to go check it out and when I got there I was not disappointed. There were tons of stores to choose from all with more options than the opposing stores in Tamarindo.
But while I was looking through all these shops I realized that just like in the states you have your bigger stores that are pricier but you can find more name brand items, and you also have small thrift shop type stores that are much cheaper but have lower quality or used clothes.
So I thought it would be easiest to choose the two that stood out to me most and compared their prices so you have an idea between the two.
Tiendas Sinia
Tiendas Sinia was a small local thrift shop with fairly good standards for the condition of their clothes. And as you can see the prices at Tiendas Sinia don’t really change, Witch is great! The selection there was great too; I could find anything from Hawaiian to Adida’s t-shirts and sweatpants along with button downs too. This was a huge surprise to me because I really did not expect them to have name brands let alone for that price. This store overall was a huge success on my hunt to find more clothing options for cheap.
Ekono
Ekono was a bit of a different store though, this store was much bigger not only in size but also just in products. You could get clothes, kitchen utensils, toys, and other miscellaneous items too. This also means that you can get accessories like jewelry, sunglasses, and purses. As well as there clothes being new and more up to date
in fashion.
There prices though as you can see are quite a bit different but that is to be expected when competing with a used clothing store. So that now brings us to the question of is the price difference worth it? And the answer to that really is up to you. I personally have no problem getting clothes from the thrift store as oppose to some of my friends who thought it was too trashy.
But as I said before it’s not going to make a difference since you’re in the same outfit of a tank top and swimsuit most days so just shop where you want. Either that be in Tamarindo or some other shops in Santa Cruz just make sure you’re in your best beachwear and ready to have fun.
