Playa Junquillal

Seekers of oceanfront tranquility need look no further than Junquillal (pronounced hoon-key-YALL), a beach town as far away from the crowd as you can get on a decent road. A surprisingly cosmopolitan mélange of expats has settled in this out-of-the-way area. There's a supermarket at the entrance to an upscale housing development, but Junquillal is still barely on the tourist map; consequently its few hotels offer some of the best deals on the North Pacific coast. Avoid visiting between September and November, when hotels close, beaches are empty, and Junquillal virtually turns into a ghost town.