The beach at Infinity Bay, Honduras

A couple times a year I like to highlight which pages of Luxury Latin America travelers are clicking on the most. It changes a lot from one quarter to the next depending on where our readers are headed and who’s in the news (good or bad), and usually it’s a bit surprising who makes it up to the top.

The most popular pages are the portal ones, like the main luxury tours page or luxury travel in Costa Rica, but here are the individual ones people planning a vacation landed on the most so far this year.

Luxury hotel and resort reviews:

5) Infinity Bay in Roatan, Honduras
4) Cayo Espanto near Ambergris Caye, Belize
3) Jicaro Island Ecolodge near Granada, Nicaragua
2) Azul in Ambergris Caye, Belize
1) Hotel Garzon in Uruguay

Mendoza wine country, Argentina

Luxury tours in Latin America:

5) Getting Pampered in the Spas of Argentina
4) Touring the Wine Districts of Chile Near Santiago
3) Touring the Best of Mendoza Wine Country, Argentina
2) Trekking From Lodge to Lodge to Machu Picchu, Peru
1) The Coffee Triangle of Colombia

So from all this I’ll conclude you want to head to a beach, get pampered, or drink some wine. Except for that hardy bunch going trekking through the Andes Mountains…

In the middle of the night at Aqua Wellness Resort, nestled in my comfortable bed, I had a dream that I was looking out of a second-floor window in a house and below me was a pack of hounds wailing and howling, foam around their mouths. I awoke and was immediately disoriented because the sound didn’t stop. The noises were real but they weren’t coming from dogs. They were coming from two howler monkeys on a branch right off my deck, sounding like creatures from the depths of hell.

Aqua is not some sanitized concrete resort where nature has been beaten back from the shore. From many units you can’t even see the water because the developers wanted to maintain the feeling of what it would be like to live in a national park. Only the minimum number of trees come down to build a villa and the buildings are spaced out rather than trying to maximize the use of the acreage.

Natural paths of wood and crushed pumice stone lead down to the beach, past scurrying crabs and native vegetation, birds and monkeys moving around in the canopy overhead. At the bottom is a bar with a view, an excellent restaurant, and an area with a brick oven pizza. Walk up a bit past this complex and you come to a spot so heavenly it may people who have never done yoga try it because of the chance to exercise with such a fantastic vista over the bay and small peninsula jutting out.

This is a wellness resort, yes, but here it’s all about balance: good food from good sources and the chance to relax or exercise so close to nature. This is not really a hotel as such: all these treehouse-looking casitas are homes owned by individuals, but all are managed in a central booking pool and it feels like a regular hotel in terms of check-in, room charges, and amenities. More units are coming on line in this pristine natural setting on its own sandy bay if you’re interested in that. But for staying here as a guest, see our full review of Aqua Wellness Resort in Nicaragua and enjoy the villa video tour below.

Hotels and resorts are like organic creatures: they keep evolving and changing. So what was true four years ago may not be true today.

Because of this, we are continually updating and rewriting our luxury hotel and resort reviews when there’s a new wing added, a big renovation, or a name change.

On the last count, we just posted an all-new review of Viceroy Riviera Maya, formerly Tides Riviera Maya (pictured above). Same parent company, same great service, but an upgrade on some of the amenities to bring it up to the company’s highest level brand.

Upgraded with soft lighting and sleek furniture, the high-ceiling, thatched-roofed accommodations evoke the feel of a romantic jungle retreat adorned in native textiles and warm woods. Ideal for honeymooners, the enormous bathrooms with fine touches of locally made soap are complete with indoor and outdoor showers and his-and-hers sink and closets. The airy bungalows-situated oceanfront, ocean view or nestled in the jungle-feature small private plunge pools and a patio with elegant chaise lounges and handmade crochet hammocks ideal for curling up with a book.

We also recently posted an all-new review of Llao Llao, perhaps the best-known resort in Patagonia.

In Costa Rica, we posted a new review of the best hotel in San Jose proper: Hotel Grano de Oro.

Sometimes a great colonial building hotel doesn’t have the room or the reason to change, however, and they just stay great. I didn’t feel any need to change the reviews in place for Hotel Dario or La Gran Francia in Nicaragua. In a good way, they’re timeless.

Follow the individual country links here for detailed reviews of the best luxury hotels in Mexico, Central America, and South America.

If you’re looking for a peaceful place to get away from it all, a short flight away from much of the U.S., El Jicaro Island Eco-Lodge on Nicaragua’s big lake near Granada would be a fine choice.

Later I will post some photos on here of animals and food, but how about a video tour for now?

I promise you’ll look forward to meal time here. You’ll feel downright healthy too on top of it. The sustainability claim is a serious one here and it extends from the building materials to what’s on your plate at all times. Pretty much everything comes from local sources, vetted well.

Enjoy the tour, then see our full review of El Jicaro Island Lodge.

We continue to bring your round-ups on the luxury real estate scene in popular areas for vacation or retirement. This month we travel to the Spanish colonial gem of Nicaragua—Granada.

This attractive city on a lake, less than an hour from the international airport in Managua, has witnessed a cycle familiar to those of you who have been reading about real estate in the Americas for a while. Before word got out you could buy or restore a colonial home in the center for well under $100,000. Then as the major media piled in and declared Granada to be the next big thing, the U.S. bubble money flowed and speculators piled in. Then the crash came up north and prices dropped. They didn’t drop back to where they started of course, but those who bought at the top are going to be waiting a while to get their money back, much as the buyers in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida will be waiting.

If this is your time to buy though, you’ve got to think this is a good point in the cycle. Prices have leveled off and are probably accurately reflecting real worth. So check out our detailed story on luxury real estate in Granada, Nicaragua to see what you can get for $400K to $500K, the range where most of the best high-end properties are tapping out.