Liberia Guanacaste International Airport (nb: it is sometimes called by one, both or either of these names, and is also called "Daniel Oduber Quirós International Airport") is an international airport located in the Guanacaste Province of Costa Rica, a little more than 100 linear miles north of the capital of San Jose. Guanacaste is Costa Rica's least populous province, and is poorer than average, but it has one of Costa Rica's two true international airports with regularly scheduled international flights.
The answer is that Liberia Guanacaste Airport is located close to the famous beaches of the Nicoya Peninsula, including Tamarindo, Nosara and Samara. Especially in the cold winter months of the United States and Canada, these beaches are an international tourist destination, and thus big jets fly into an airport located in the middle of mostly empty savanna, located about a dozen miles outside of Liberia, itself a city of only around 60,000 people.
As an added note: are there logistical, environmental, social or just plain aesthetic issues with plopping an international airport with flights from around the world down in the middle of a sparsely populated area with sometimes poor infrastructure? The answer is: yes.
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