13 Standout Luxury Resorts in Costa Rica, From Jungle Hideaways to Beach Retreats

Tumbling waterfalls, dense jungles, winding rivers, smoldering volcanoes, and secluded beaches make Costa Rica an idyllic destination for travelers looking to immerse themselves in nature. What’s more, over the past few decades, Costa Rica has prioritized protecting its natural beauty in a country that once had some of the world’s highest deforestation rates. Today, Costa Rica continues to lead the way on sustainability: Nationwide, it runs on 98 percent renewable energy and is working to decarbonize its economy by 2050.

Sustainable practices have taken hold at the country’s best hotels and resorts. These retreats offer travelers unforgettable experiences in protected natural areas, and they go the extra mile to operate responsibly within their environments and communities.

As part of Afar’s Hotels We Love series, we’ve chosen the 13 best retreats across the country. Whether you prefer a safari-style tented camp with volcano views or a beachfront paradise with decent swells, these Costa Rican retreats deliver sublime experiences in nature while offering something for everyone.

Casa Chameleon

Courtesy of Casa Chameleon

As a member of the culinary-focused Relais & Châteaux hotel collection, Casa Chameleon is recognized for its commitment to sustainability, personalized service, and exceptional cuisine. Set on a hill overlooking Las Catalinas, a coastal town north of Tamarindo, the hotel features panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean. Each of the 21 contemporary-feeling private villas features an infinity-edge saltwater plunge pool.

The culinary options here are truly impressive. Casa Chameleon’s Sentido Norte Restaurant showcases Costa Rica’s food heritage and flavors in an open-air setting with uninterrupted ocean views. Grotto 12 is the newest restaurant, offering a selection of global wines in a wine cave with only 12 seats.

The Green House is an intimate dining spot that celebrates Costa Rican cuisine with dishes made from ingredients grown on site. Meanwhile, La Pampa Grill features slow-cooked sea- and farm-to-table feasts, including fall-off-the-bone ribs prepared on the open-fire barbecue.

El Silencio Lodge & Spa

Courtesy of El Silencio Lodge & Spa

El Silencio Lodge is set within a 500-acre cloud forest reserve on the slopes of Poás Volcano, about halfway between La Fortuna and San Jose; a gurgling creek runs through the grounds. The retreat’s 24 suites and villas face the nearby Poás Volcano, among the largest active volcanoes in Costa Rica. The on-site Esencia Spa is designed to channel the cloud forest’s energy and offers treatments that highlight local ingredients, like a chocolate massage and a volcanic clay wrap.

A private trail leads to the property’s three waterfalls, paths for horseback riding and mountain biking, and an adventure park for ziplining and rappelling. The resort also offers cooking and cocktail making classes, bird-watching and night frog walks, coffee and wine tastings, tree planting, and traditional oxcart painting classes.

After a long day, guests can drink and dine at Las Ventanas Restaurant and Toro Bohemio Bar, which use vegetables and herbs from El Silencio’s 5,000-square-foot organic greenhouse, fresh eggs from resident free-range chickens, and trout from on-site ponds, where guests can even fish for their main course.

Finca Rosa Blanca

Courtesy of Finca Rosa Blanca

Costa Rica is famous for its high-quality coffee beans from eight growing regions, which produce only 100 percent Arabica. And for a glimpse at the growers of these coveted beans, Finca Rosa Blanca is the place to stay. Located in the highlands, an hour’s drive outside of the capital city of San Jose, this family-owned coffee plantation practices sustainable, organic agriculture.

The inn occupies a building that was the family’s original home in 1974, and today the interiors celebrate local art and culture as much as coffee and food. The 14 individually designed suites feature hand-painted murals by Oscar Salazar, a local artist. Accommodations also feature free-form hot tubs, wooden furnishings crafted locally, and (of course) all the coffee you can drink—much of it grown on site.

The hotel’s farm-to-table restaurant serves such dishes as coconut milk soup with root vegetables and braised beef tenderloin with stewed plantains. Ingredients often come from the property’s fruit orchards and organic vegetable and herb greenhouse. On a coffee tour, guests learn about coffee making from plant and fermentation to roasting and drinking. When you’re not caffeinating, linger by the chemical-free infinity pool; it’s surrounded by a garden filled with orchids, bromeliads, and palms and has views of Costa Rica’s green Central Valley and its two active volcanoes.

Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo

Courtesy of Four Seasons

Located on the Pacific coast, in the northwest corner of Guanacaste Province, the 1,400-acre Peninsula Papagayo is easy to access: It’s only an hour’s drive from Liberia Guanacaste airport. And when it comes to lodgings, the Four Seasons Resort Peninsula Papagayo is the peninsula’s crown jewel. The 182 rooms, suites, and private residences are equipped with contemporary furnishings in natural hues, while floor-to-ceiling windows let in ample light. Guests can relax by any of four pools or in a cabana on the beach at the new Virador Beach Club, which has a restaurant and lounge, infinity-edge pool, and private cabanas, all set against the scenic coastline.

Kids have access to the Kids for All Seasons club, designed to reflect the area’s flora and fauna, while teens can check out the Tuanis Teen Center—a rarity in the resort world with a basketball court and social spaces for meeting new friends. Other on-site pursuits include surfing lessons with the resort’s women-run SurfX surf school and golfing on the 18-hole Arnold Palmer–designed course, which uses an irrigation system that reduces water use by 20 percent. The spa added a new Wellness Shala, an indoor-outdoor structure that hosts yoga, meditation, and other health workshops.

Head off property on a rainforest excursion to spot the three local monkey species; traverse the swinging bridges, rope obstacles, and zip lines of the nearby Palmares aerial park; hit the water on a water bike or paddle through a mangrove forest; or go off-roading on a UTV around the Palmares estuary. Guests can also join a coral restoration project where they help clean, catalog, and restore the area’s fragile coral reefs.

Hacienda AltaGracia, Auberge Resorts Collection

Courtesy of Auberge Resorts Collection

The soothing views of the green Talamanca Mountains from the private plunge pools and terraces of Hacienda AltaGracia’s 50 one- and two-bedroom casitas feel like a wellness experience unto themselves. That’s not surprising, given that nature-based wellness is the focus of the 180-acre property. It might be experienced via freshly squeezed juice or coffee with ingredients from the resort’s farm. Or selecting a horse from the stables and riding through the green hills nearby. Or climbing to the top of the rainforest canopy by rope.

Hacienda AltaGracia also features Casa De Agua, a wellness spa with thermal experiences that harness the power of water, heat, and steam. Off property, the resort can arrange a visit to an Indigenous Boruca village or a rafting trip on the Pacuare River. Not to be missed: A meeting with a local family for a glimpse at life on their farm in the Nicoya Peninsula, one of the world’s five Blue Zones—where people are healthiest and live the longest.

Hotel Nantipa

Courtesy of Nantipa

The Nicoya Peninsula is one of the five Blue Zones, designated areas around the world where people live the longest and are healthiest. It’s where travelers will find Nantipa, a boutique hotel that’s shaded by trees and faces an idyllic beach. The hotel is composed of 27 suites and bungalows. The two new beachfront villas have three bedrooms, kitchens, and indoor-outdoor living areas with private pools.

Nantipa is home to the Numú Wellness Center, where guests can take part in various healing and fitness classes and workshops like sound healing, life coaching sessions, and Ayurvedic therapy. Meanwhile, Manzú Restaurant, right on the beach, serves dishes with both international and Caribbean influences.

When not at the pool or on the beach, guests can go on excursions, including rainforest hikes, surfing lessons, horseback riding, fishing trips, and a boat tour to Tortuga Island to spot marine wildlife. In February 2023, the hotel was awarded a Certification for Sustainable Tourism by the Costa Rican Tourism Institute, thanks to such policies as the omission of single-use plastics, gray water irrigation, and solar-heated water.

Kurá Boutique Hotel

Courtesy of Kurá Boutique Hotel

This adults-only, eight-suite retreat on the Pacific Coast north of the Osa Peninsula is owned by a Costa Rican architect and biologist who envisioned a hospitality experience that’s both stylish and sustainable. The furnishings are made from responsibly sourced teak wood, and you won’t see any single-use plastic. The resort sits on a hillside overlooking Marino Ballena National Park and its famous Whale’s Tail sandbar, where migrating humpback whales can often be spotted. Accommodations have floor-to-ceiling windows and two-person hammocks on open-air verandas (four suites have private pools).

Kurá’s most alluring attraction, aside from its beach-meets-rain forest setting, is its infinity pool, complete with an underwater sound system. It’s surrounded by a bar and restaurant serving ingredients sourced nearby, like seafood and grass-fed meat from local farmers. Some produce is grown in the property’s organic greenhouse, and the resort composts all food waste on site. The hotel offers a complimentary shuttle to the village of Uvita and the whale coast, and it can arrange for waterfall hikes, paddleboarding and snorkeling, and horseback riding.

Lapa Rios Lodge

Courtesy of Lapa Rios Lodge

Lapa Rios Lodge offers both rainforest and ocean adventures in one of the last remaining coastal lowland tropical rain forests in Central America. The luxury lodge on the wild Osa Peninsula is adjacent to biodiverse Corcovado National Park, and it has preserved more than 1,000 acres of rainforest since it opened in 1993. The 17 bungalows have hardwood floors and large private verandas with their own plunge pools. Guest activities include volunteer work to help restore Golfo Dulce’s coral reefs, bird-watching walks where macaw and toucan sightings are common, and waterfall hikes.

Sustainability tours offer a behind-the-scenes look at the renewable building materials used to construct the lodge, as well as a tutorial on how the 240 solar panels, 10 water turbines, and 48 energy storage units provide renewable energy and purified water. Guests also visit the lodge’s organic gardens and pig pens, where food waste from the restaurant feeds the resident pigs.

Much of the food grown in the gardens ends up on the menu at Brisa Azul Restaurant, which offers a menu with entirely plant-based dishes and another featuring sustainably sourced meat, dairy, and seafood.

Nayara Tented Camp

Courtesy of Nayara Tented Camp

This tented camp in the La Fortuna area couldn’t be further from roughing it. The 37 spacious glamping accommodations of Nayara Tented Camp come with private hot-spring-fed pools with views of the active Arenal volcano, king-size beds, massive bathrooms with deep soaking tubs, and indoor and outdoor showers. This newest retreat by Nayara is located on the same 62-acre rewilded estate as sister properties Nayara Gardens (fully renovated as of 2025) and Nayara Springs. The camp offers several multibedroom tents that are especially convenient for traveling families.

Activities that appeal to various age groups include naturalist-led bird-watching, frog-spotting walks, and visits to the farmers’ market in La Fortuna town and to the wildlife-filled Arenal Hanging Bridges Park. Several sloths live on the property, thanks to the resort’s reforestation efforts that planted more than 1,000 cecropia trees, which the mammals depend on for food.

Post-adventure, enjoy one of the resort’s six cantilevered hot spring pools in the jungle, dine at the new on-site Mediterranean restaurant Ayala, or visit the treetop spa and yoga platform at Nayara Springs.

Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve

Courtesy of Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve

Occupying a peaceful corner of Costa Rica’s biodiverse Peninsula Papagayo, Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, lets travelers commune deeply with nature and local culture. Escaping into nature can often mean forgoing high-end creature comforts, but not so at this property, which translates to “lush garden” in the local Chorotega dialect. The resort is part of Marriott’s ultra-luxurious Ritz-Carlton Reserve collection, all in remote locales that focus on nature and culture—and it’s the first in Central America. Nekajui celebrates its environs from all angles, whether architecturally or in its thoughtful cuisine.

The 107 guest rooms and suites all face the ocean. (Ground-floor suites that have a partial ocean view were cleverly given firepits—an amenity no other room has.) The smallest guest room is still quite large, at 872 square feet, and floor-to-ceiling sliding-glass windows in all rooms help blur the line between indoor and outdoor spaces. Eighty percent of the materials extracted from or moved from the earth to build the hotel were repurposed into hotel features, including wood headboards and siding.

Related: This Luxurious New Hotel Just Opened in Costa Rica With a Treehouse Spa and Spectacular Views of the Pacific

Origins Floral and Origins Astral Lodges

Photo by David Regueira

Visitors are drawn to the quiet town of Bijagua for access to Tenorio National Park, home to the active Tenorio volcano, the Rio Celeste waterfall, and resident wildlife, including tapirs, howler monkeys, and sloths. Here, set on a 111-acre private rainforest estate in the highlands of Bijagua, Origins Lodge operates two distinct retreats, reachable via private heliport or a roughly two-hour drive past small villages.

The original Origins Floral, the more intimate of the two, is ideal for couples, with six circular one-bedroom luxury lodges and one three-bedroom treetop villa. Accommodations blend into the landscape, thanks to green roofs and natural materials like wood, bamboo, adobe, and stone. Each lodge has its own private hot tub, canopy bed, and an indoor-outdoor shower; organic bath products are made with wild ylang-ylang growing on the property.

Origins Astral, geared toward families and groups, opened in January 2026 and is set around seven multi-bedroom villas, with interiors inspired by the celestial: Ceiling patterns suggest planetary rings, and a cloud-shaped mesh mobile hangs in reception. The design is inspired by the crafts of the Indigenous Maleku people, and the majority of furniture was created by local artisans with wood from naturally fallen trees.

Behind the scenes, the hotel has a large on-site organic garden and operates its own composting stations, solar water tanks, and a treatment plant for soapy water that’s reused for watering plants. One of the highlights of a stay here is a naturalist-led walk on the wildlife-rich property—keep your eyes peeled for tree frogs and toucans.

Silvestre Nosara

Photo by Juan Tribaldos/Silvestre Nosara

Set on Costa Rica’s peaceful Pacific coast, Silvestre Nosara brings together the sensibility of a private residence with the convenience of a luxury hotel. Each of the nine apartment-style suites houses two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a fully equipped kitchen—especially convenient for families and groups. Guests also have the amenities of a typical hotel, including a rooftop restaurant and bar, a gym, and an infinity pool. Surfers take note: Silvestre (“wild” in Spanish) is near one of the best surf breaks in all of Costa Rica, and guests can book lessons through an in-house surf concierge.

This article originally appeared online in August 2025. It was updated with new reporting in April 2026.