Dispatch: Costa Rica

Costa Rica has one of the world’s few “Blue Zones,” where people live longer, healthier lives. It also has extraordinary biodiversity, a peaceful, stable government, killer coffee, and these top hotels.

This is the final installment of our summer Dispatch series, where we dispatch the chatter and give you some easily digestible hotel curation content. We won’t spend a half-dozen or so paragraphs up here describing a place and explaining why you should visit it. Instead, we’ll just let the hotels do the talking, choosing for you a collection of standout accommodations that represent the range of culture, character, history, luxury, and landscape on offer.

Without further ado, here is a list of top hotels that tell the story of hospitality in Costa Rica. To see our entire selection of hotels in Costa Rica, click here.

Origins Luxury Lodge

Upala, Costa Rica

Fantastically secluded in the mountainous interior of northern Costa Rica, Origins Luxury Lodge isn’t one for subtlety. Its elevated perspective gives it a panoramic view that takes in the rainforest’s treetops, the vast Lake Nicaragua, and the distant volcanoes. Its unique construction is eye-catching even as its natural materials blend harmoniously with its surroundings. The entire experience aims to create big, bold memories.

Sendero Hotel

Nosara, Costa Rica

Who better to anticipate what a traveler would want from Costa Rica than a traveler to Costa Rica? Hotelier-to-be Stefanie Tannenbaum was stranded in Nosara on a 2020 surf vacation, and made the absolute most of it: not only permanently relocating but eventually opening Sendero, a lovely little boutique hotel set a mere hundred or so paces from the beach at Playa Guiones, one of Costa Rica’s most famous surf spots.

Rancho Pacifico

Uvita, Costa Rica

There’s precisely one stressful thing about Rancho Pacifico, and that’s the two-mile drive, 2,000 vertical feet up a mountainside, from the little town of Uvita on Costa Rica’s southern coast. The payoff? 250 private mountainside acres of virgin rainforest with an embarrassment of ocean views, flora, fauna and pristine waterfalls, all shared by a maximum of twenty guests.

Casa Chameleon Las Catalinas

Catalinas, Costa Rica

Casa Chameleon has a formula that works: spacious and sustainably built villas with private terraces, saltwater plunge pools, and hammocks with ocean views. Their second Costa Rica location is in Las Catalinas, an adorably tiny beach village between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean on Costa Rica’s northwest coast, a town purpose built to accentuate views of the landscape, eliminate the need for cars, and leave the wilderness alone.

Hotel Aguas Claras

Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

The Caribbean coast of Costa Rica is nothing short of spectacular, and this particular stretch, down by the border with Panama, is something special indeed. You’d happily stay in a hastily constructed vacation rental to experience a setting like this, but you don’t have to — not while there’s a boutique hotel of the Hotel Aguas Claras’s quality. It’s a family project, and a labor of love, established by an artist from San José and her daughter.

Esh Hotel & Spa

Nosara, Costa Rica

There’s a slow burn to Esh Hotel, an adults-only retreat where fire is both inspiration and ritual. Its name, drawn from the Hebrew word for flame, flickers through the design, with lava-stone soaking tubs, blackened wood furniture, and an ever-burning fireplace where guests cast their intentions. The rainforest setting is immersive, from canopy-brushing balconies to jungle baths, while the three-tiered pool invites deep unwinding.

Rio Perdido

Bagaces, Costa Rica

Rio Perdido is one of the remaining places to get off the well-beaten path in Costa Rica. These twenty bungalows in a remote, protected region, are connected by a system of elevated pathways and hiking trails, stand on stilts near the edge of the two deep river gorges that converge here. Built of stainless steel, they’re stylish but efficient — and, of course, designed to make minimal impact on the environment.

Tabacon Grand Spa Thermal Resort

Nuevo Arenal, Costa Rica

Situated at the base of the Arenal volcano, Tabacon Grand Spa Thermal Resort is a wellness paradise surrounded by Costa Rica’s largest collection of natural hot springs, which is central to the resort’s experience. Here, the Temezcal — a traditional sweat bath designed to purify and detoxify — is guided by a resident shaman, surrounded by the rainforest and thermal river pools; a serious pampering ritual for the spiritually inclined.

Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve

Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Few places combine a lush rainforest setting with top-flight luxury quite like the Papagayo Peninsula, and its case is only made stronger by the addition of Nekajui, from Ritz-Carlton’s top-end Reserve sub-brand. Here, on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, stands a substantial central lodge orbited by a constellation of accommodations — some of which are reached via a wooden suspension bridge that hangs across a ravine.

Nayara Springs

Fortuna, Costa Rica

Set in the Arenal Volcano National Park in central Costa Rica, Nayara Springs is a high-end adults-only hotel whose villas have everything from spring-fed plunge pools to indoor and outdoor showers and handsome traditional-style furnishings. Both restaurants are quite frankly more impressive than they really need to be, as is the spa, whose open-air pavilions are surrounded by the treetop canopy.

Lapa Rios

Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica

Lapa Rios, perhaps Costa Rica’s most famous eco-lodge, certainly cuts a humble silhouette: a row of thatched-roof lodges on a ridge hundreds of feet above the beach, it’s as far as you can get from the pampering of a luxury hotel experience. With no phones, televisions or music, it’s an exercise in total immersion — in this case, in the unspoiled landscape of Central America’s last surviving lowland tropical rainforest.

Pacuare Lodge

Limón, Costa Rica

You could arrive at Pacuare in a chauffeured Jeep, or you can roll up to the hotel’s entrance in an inflatable raft, triumphant after a rollicking whitewater journey through the jungle. The adventure of getting to this elegant eco-lodge is half the fun, and the trip, which is apt for novices, is a spectacular introduction to the lush tropical landscape of this remote region; the opposite of the relaxation you’ll experience while actually staying at the lodge.