Sustainable Ecotourism Hotel on a Private Nature Reserve

When you stay at Punta Leona Hotel & Club, keep your eyes open for spider monkeys, iguanas, and sleepy-eyed sloths frolicking among the tree boughs. This ecotourism resort on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast has thousands of animals that call the resort’s 750-acre private nature reserve home. More than 330 species of birds live in the reserve, including scarlet macaws, toucans, and hummingbirds. Eco-friendly management of this reserve—in addition to water- and energy-conservation efforts—helped earn Punta Leona Hotel a Sustainable Tourism award from the Costa Rican Tourism Institute.

Verdant landscapes surround Selvamar superior guest rooms, which are tastefully decorated with dark wood furnishings and burnt-orange bedding. A short walk along private winding roads takes you to Mantas Beach’s golden sands. The road also ends up at Carabelas Restaurant, which serves a Costa Rican buffet. An internal shuttle makes it easy to get from one end of the resort to the other.

You can spend your day lounging by one of the three pools, playing basketball, or exploring the countryside on an ecotourism day trip. Popular trips include horseback rides in the mountains and cruises to the deserted Isla Tortuga. Or spend a day at the resort’s Natural Spa to unwind with a coffee scrub or a volcanic-mud body wrap.

Jacó, Costa Rica: Surfing Beaches and Tropical Rainforests near San José

In Puntarenas, you’re never far from a beach. Costa Rica’s biggest province occupies a long, thin section of the country alongside nearly 500 miles of Pacific coastline. Overlooking the Gulf of Nicoya, the town of Jacó attracts surfers from all over the globe thanks to its consistently big waves and good breaks. The best wave chasers make beelines for Playa Hermosa, a 6-mile stretch of black sand that’s considered one of the top surfing destinations in Central America.

Though beaches are a big draw, Puntarenas also has a wide variety of national parks and nature reserves—part of the reason Costa Rica has become such a popular destination for ecotourism. Just a few miles inland from Jacó, Carara National Park is the country’s northernmost tropical rainforest. The park provides shelter for poison-dart frogs, two-toed sloths, and hundreds of scarlet macaws (a rare sight in most parts of the country). Los Quetzales National Park lies to the southwest in the neighboring province of San José. The park features 14 ecosystems in the Cordillera de Talamanca mountain range and is named for one of its most colorful inhabitants: the quetzal, a lime-green and scarlet bird.

The Costa Rican capital of San José is located about 60 miles northeast of Jacó. By day, the big city bustles with open-air artisan markets and street vendors selling tamales and pupusas (corn tortillas stuffed with cheese and meat). By night, flashy discos can be found in all flavors, from ultrasophisticated to full-on rowdy. Wandering the streets of San José, you'll encounter a confluence of architecture styles—part Spanish, part Moorish—and some of the older neighborhoods still have homes made of wood and adobe.

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