Costa Rica’s Hottest New Hotels and Lodges

Deserted sand. Wildlife refuges. A laid-back pura vida lifestyle. What’s not to love about Costa Rica? Sure, it’s been on our radar for a while, but with a host of small, stylish hotels hidden in the jungle and along the shore, the tiny Central American country is now more appealing than ever. Here, the eight places that top our list.

Oxygen Jungle Villas, Uvita de Osa

As you drive up the steep gravel road that leads to this remote retreat above the southern town of Uvita, you may start to lose faith. Did you miss a turn? Could it be up this high? A few minutes later, you spot the pool, edged with Moroccan lanterns and seeming to spill out over green hills to the Pacific. Lounge music plays at just the right volume; guests lie under Balinese umbrellas reading their Kindles and listening to their iPods. Marco, the young concierge, escorts you to your bungalow, one of just 12 on the property. The rooms are all glass, except for the teak peaked roofs, and furnished with big poster beds, stacks of baskets that serve as dressers, and large white sofas on the front porches. There’s something disconcerting about staying in such futuristic digs in the middle of the jungle, but you’ll adjust quickly. Soon you’re off trekking to Oxygen’s waterfall, visiting nearby beaches, or venturing a 40-minute drive south to Corcovado National Park, one of the most biodiverse landscapes in the world.

T+L Tip: Ask the concierge to organize a zipline excursion with Osa Canopy Tours.

Rancho Pacifico, Uvita de Osa

Seeking a mountain to call your own? Set on a 250-acre preserve, this hilltop eco-lodge draws an A-list clientele (Anderson Cooper, Sheryl Crow, and Al Gore, to name a few) who come for the privacy: check in to one of two new “Treehauses,” which are set back from the main building. Rooms have neo-Modernist furnishings and sweeping vistas of the ocean—almost unheard of for a hotel in the rain forest. Adventurers can go wildlife spotting or visit indigenous villages, while those in need of downtime can opt for a hot-stone massage or relax at one of the property’s five pools. There is little reason to leave the lodge, except perhaps to spend the day at Ballena Beach Club, where hotel guests have free access to the umbrella-covered chaises and pristine white sand of Playa La Colonia. $$

T+L Tip: Arrange for a seafood dinner for two—or 10—beside the infinity pool.

Florblanca, Playa Santa Teresa

It’s not often that you come across an Asian-inspired resort in Costa Rica—especially one located on Playa Santa Teresa’s best surf break. Here, it’s more about blissing out than riding the waves. There are only a few dozen guests at any time, and everything is designed to soothe—from the boulder-studded pool, where you’ll feel like you’re swimming in an aqueous Zen garden, to the bamboo spa bungalow, with its ponds and shoji screens. Each of Florblanca’s 11 villas is accented with organic fabrics and native hardwoods, and all have terraces outfitted with hammocks. (Book the Surf House, steps from the ocean.) After an evening yoga class on the beach, kick back with a tamarind mojito—or two—from the open-air Nectar bar. $$$

T+L Tip: Don’t miss the tide pools surrounded by limestone formations, just steps from Florblanca.

Latitude 10º, Playa Santa Teresa

If Florblanca feels like a luxe Asian retreat, Latitude 10, its neighbor to the north, is somewhat of a no-frills—but fashionable—safari hideaway in Africa. Don’t expect Frette linens or flat-screen TV’s: the five simple, open-sided wooden casitas were built with shades instead of windows, so guests can “sleep and reside completely in harmony with nature,” as the sign reads in the lobby. Come dinnertime, you’ll be rewarded for your fortitude, thanks to affable French chef Sebastian Regier, who creates daily seafood-centric dishes—guests can preorder before noon for the freshest catch from local fishermen—served in the breezy dining room or, if you prefer, at a secluded beachside spot. $$

T+L Tip: Unwind with a sunset holistic massage by Sebastian Campanile or Dolores Aviani, two of the top practitioners in the area.

Hotels
$ Less than $200
$$ $200 to $350
$$$ $350 to $500
$$$$ $500 to $1,000
$$$$$ More than $1,000

Restaurants
$ Less than $25
$$ $25 to $75
$$$ $75 to $150
$$$$ More than $150

Rainbow Beaches Around The World

Beaches not only come in all shapes, sizes, and textures, they come in a virtual rainbow of colors. Most beach fans know that sand color can range from pale cream to golden to caramel, but few realize that in select places around the world, sands can be red, brown, pink, orange, gold, purple, green, and even black!

Just how does this happen? Beaches can form anywhere the ocean meets the shore. Over millennia, waves scour the coastline, creating flat areas. These new expanses begins to accumulate sediments washing down from surrounding uplands, as well as those eroded from the ocean floor and tossed up onto shore by wave action. Coastal winds and storms push sediments up beyond the reach of the waves and a beach is born.

 

The color of the sand on any particular beach usually reflects the surrounding landscape and the makeup of the adjoining ocean floor. However some beaches are covered in sand that has been washed down from mountains hundreds of miles away, as in the case of Siesta Key’s Crescent Beach in Florida, which won the 1987 Great International Sand Challenge for the whitest sand in the world. Siesta Beach is composed of 99% pure quartz that started in the Appalachians, flowed down rivers, eventually to be deposited on the shores of the key. This dazzling white sand is so fine in texture that it runs though fingers like powdered sugar, and because it is nearly pure quartz it stays cool no matter how hot the temperature gets.

In recent years, a competitor to Siesta Key has emerged: Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay, Australia is listed in the Guiness Book of Records as having the whitest sand of any beach in the world. It, too is comprised of fine particles of quartz.

 

But white sand, spectacular as it may be, can hardly compete with the likes of a blood red beach. Located on the Hawaiian island of Maui, Kaihalulu Beach is tucked into a tiny pocket cove near Hana Bay, on the eastern half of the island. One of a very few red beaches in the world, the sand gets its red-black color from the iron-rich crumbling cinder cone hill surrounding the bay.

 

Not to be outdone, Ramla il-Hamra beach on the Maltese island of Gozo has orange colored sand, as does Porto Ferro, a mile-plus long orange sand beach backed by large dunes on the island of Sardinia off the coast of mainland Italy. Both of these islands are volcanic in nature, jutting up from the floor of the Mediterranean off the southern tip of Italy. Their orange colored sands derive from volcanic deposits as well as unusual orange limestone found in the area.

 

An absolute gem of a beach is Pu’u Mahana Beach in Mahana Bay on the Big Island of Hawaii, one of only a few known beaches in the world with olive-green sand (the others being in Guam and the Galapagos Islands). The land surrounding Pu’u Mahana consists of lava that contains large quantities of olivine, the mineral that forms of the semi-precious gem peridot. Strong waves constantly pound this coast, sweeping other particles out to sea while leaving the heavier olivine on the beach. Beach-goers have been rumored to find peridots on the beach large enough to sell to jewelers.

 

Pink beaches are also quite rare. They occur only in areas near a very large coral reef formations that contain a tiny organism that has a red skeleton. When they die, these skeletons fall to the ocean floor and are gradually eroded to small particles that are carried to shore by the current, where they mix in with the sand. The finest example of a “Pretty In Pink” beach may be the one at Harbor Island, Eleuthera in the Bahamas, although pink beaches are also found in Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Barbados, the Philipines, and in Scotland.

 

 

When the manganese garnet in the hills surrounding Pfeiffer Beach in California’s Big Sur gets washed down to the ocean it turn the sand a vivid purple color. The further north you go, the more purplish the sand becomes. Depending upon the day, the sands can sparkle in shades of violet, lavender, ruby red, pink, or royal purple. On the opposite side of the continent, mountains northwest of Long Island contain the mineral piedmontite, which also turns coastal sands purple.

 

Rockaway Beach in Pacifica, California, exhibits a most luscious shade of chocolate brown. This unusual color occurs when eroded bluish-grey limestone mixes with volcanic greenstone from the hillsides that ring the beach.

 

 

And then there’s Rainbow Beach on Fraser Island in Australia. Seemingly unable to make up its mind, Rainbow Beach displays more than 70 different colors whenever waves and winds shift and blow its sands around. Most of the colors can be clearly seen in the cliffs behind the beach, which formed during the last ice age and are so richly banded that they have been compared to layers of rainbow sherbet. But for a real treat, dig down into the beach sand to see layer upon layer of colored, banded sands that create a new work of art with each sweep of the hand.

 

 

 

Since this roundup of rainbow beaches began with white (technically, the blending of all colors), it seems appropriate to end with black, which is the absence of color. While that may be true in scientific terms, there is no absence of color at the world’s black sand beaches – they are simply stunning! The result of volcanic activity near a coastline, these beaches are created when particles weathered from cooled lava wash down to shore. The black sands are also a source of gemstones such as garnets, rubies, sapphires, topaz, and, of course, diamonds, which form within volcanoes and are spewed out during eruptions. Though black sand beaches can be found in Argentina, the South Pacific Islands, Tahiti, the Philipines, California, Greece, and in the Dominican Republic, the best known and perhaps most stunning black beaches are found in the Hawaiian Islands.

 

One could spend a lifetime searching out beaches with uniquely colored sand, but to see the greatest variety in a short period of time head for Hawaii, which is home to beaches representing almost every color of the rainbow.

Karma Kandara : Beauty and Exotic

The Tropical Lifestyle

Karma Kandara  is a Bali holiday resort occupying a spectacular cliff top high above the Indian Ocean at the farthest extremes of an elevated limestone peninsula at Bali’s southernmost tip. The Bali resort is just 20 minutes from Ngurah Rai international airport. The property features a wide choice of luxury Bali villas and accompanying amenities that redefine first class – bridges, stone walkways and little paths meander through vivid tropical gardens connecting 46 expansive private beach villa residences, along with the luxury villa resort’s exceptional facilities.

Karma Kandara Bali is blessed with the most exhilarating views imaginable- a seemingly limitless vista of ocean and sky, 180 degrees of blue on blue brilliance. Each Bali villa rental residence comprises two or three pavilions with roofs of alang alang grass or sirap wood tiles, framing an infinity pool and garden courtyard complete with timber deck. Each bedroom has its own en-suite bathroom, while the living rooms of our Bali villas are open plan, comprising fully equipped kitchens, lounge and dining areas.

To compliment these opulent luxury Bali villas, Karma Kandara has created a highly select portfolio of public amenities, each with its own unique character. Our Bali spa resort destination offers the restaurant di Mare, rooftop bar Temple Lounge and Karma Spa & Wellness are all suspended on rocky outcrops 85 metres above the surf. For those requiring a closer encounter with the sea, this Bali resort has an inclinator to take guests down to Nammos Kandara – voted Best Beach in Bali by Hello Bali magazine in December 2008. Here, Mediterranean snacks, signature cocktails and white sands lapped by cobalt waters all wait you on your Bali beach vacation. Above it lays the luxury villa resort’s elegantly curved horizon pool.

Best Beach Awards 2013: Best Overall

What’s Your Favorite Overall Beach ?

Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman: “Seven Mile Beach aka West Bay Beach has been called one of the finest beaches in the Caribbean. This wonderful white-sand beach stretches from George Town to Long Point.”

Miami Beach, Florida: “Miami has something for everyone: A plethora of shopping at Lincoln Road Mall, legendary nightlife along Ocean Drive and crystal clear waters unparalleled on the east coast.”

Punta Cana, Dominican Republic: “The Dominican Republic is also an outdoor adventurer’s paradise, home to white-water rafting on the Yaque del Norte River, paragliding from Alto del Guayabo mountain and horseback riding along Punta Cana’s white-sand beaches.”

Matira Beach, Bora Bora, Tahiti: “Bora Bora is one of the magical islands that make up French Polynesia in the South Pacific. Just 18 miles long, this lush little slipper of land lies in a protected lagoon edged by fine white sandy shores — the best located at Matira Point.”