Spent 7 nights in Tamarindo. Overall opinion: Meh. Any desire to go back? Not really.
Think we may have erred on the town we chose to stay in. It's basically a surfer town. It's gorgeous but wife and I are generally food and culture tourists and felt the area was pretty weak on both accounts. It's more of a stare at the beauty of the landscape type place. Tamarindo is basically made for Americans as half the places have menu prices in dollars which is always a negative to find. Cost of things were higher than expected, pretty close to US prices on things. Not the end of the world, but pretty much everything from groceries, cabs, beers were nearly double of Mexico.
Perhaps if we stayed in the jungle somewhere it would have been more enjoyable but we were looking to sit in the sun and do as little as possible which we accomplished but could do that anywhere else too. Just didn't love anything about it and too much of the world left to explore.