Costa Rica
Cabuya
Low tide reveals a path to an island where locals bury their dead among tide pools.
The sea pulls back and a rocky causeway appears, slick with seawater and tide-pool life, leading to a small island where headstones stand among the spray. Twice a day, the Pacific gives access. Twice a day, it takes it away. Cabuya sits at the end of the road on Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula — a village where the dead are buried on an island the living can only reach when the tide allows.
The island cemetery has been in use since the nineteenth century. Burials and visits are timed to the twice-daily low tide, when the causeway surfaces and mourners or curious visitors walk across. At high tide, the island is completely cut off — surrounded by water and accessible only by kayak until the sea retreats again. Beyond the cemetery, the surrounding reef offers snorkelling where the Pacific meets the Golfo de Nicoya current, with sea turtles, rays, and tropical fish in the shallows. Cabuya is the southernmost village on the Nicoya Peninsula, five kilometres from Cabo Blanco Absolute Natural Reserve, where the paved world ends and protected wilderness begins.
Solo
End-of-the-road villages attract a certain kind of solo traveller — the kind who wants to time a walk to the tide, snorkel a reef alone, and eat whatever the fishermen brought in. Cabuya delivers that and nothing more.
Couple
Walking to an island cemetery at low tide, snorkelling the reef, and eating grilled fish in a village where the road simply stops — Cabuya offers the Nicoya Peninsula at its most unhurried and intimate.
- The island cemetery has been in use since the 19th century — the tidal causeway means burials and visits are timed to the twice-daily low tide.
- At high tide the island is completely surrounded — accessible only by kayak or on the next low tide, which arrives like clockwork.
- The surrounding reef provides snorkelling where the Pacific meets the Golfo Nicoya current — sea turtles, rays, and tropical fish are all regularly encountered.
- Cabuya is the southernmost village on the Nicoya Peninsula — 5km from Cabo Blanco — where the road ends and the reserve begins.
The village restaurant changes its menu with the catch — expect whole grilled fish and fried plantain.
Montezuma is twenty minutes away with its full bohemian strip of restaurants and bars.
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