Tamarindo began as a small town of several families that relied heavily on fishing. In 1985, Texas businessman Russell Wenrich bought land in the town of Tamarindo and began developing beachside cabins. Five years later, Wenrich met Robert August, star of the 1966 surf documentary The Endless Summer, who moved to the city. Still later, Wenrich convinced the Costa Rican tourism agency to subsidize the filming in Tamarindo of the 1994 sequel, The Endless Summer II. This film, which began with scenes from Tamarindo, is generally credited with starting a tourism boom that transformed a small fishing village into the tourist center it is today. Tamarindo was incorporated as a town on November 27, 1995, by Executive Decree (English: Executive Order) “Another watershed moment came in 2003, when Liberia’s nearby airport began serving international flights, putting the city five hours from Miami,” Wavelength magazine wrote in 2020. In 2004, the city’s beach was stripped of its Blue Flag designation for pollution. It regained the designation in 2006, but lost it again the following year after water quality testing by Costa Rica’s National Water and Sewer Institute determined that some areas had more than 7,000 times the level of fecal matter considered safe by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. After years of work, the city supposedly regained the Blue Flag in 2018.