One of the first batches of hotel reviews we posted on Luxury Latin America when we launched half a decade ago was for Ambergris Caye, Belize. This included what many consider the top resort on the island, Victoria House.

Hotels evolve, expand, and upgrade over the years and it was time to get a new set of eyes (and a new camera lens) trained on Victoria House. So when one of our contributors was researching the Ambergris Caye Luxury Real Estate story we posted recently, he checked into both their ownership options and what it was like for hotel guests.

We’re happy to say little has changed on the service side, with the staffers—many of them here since before we posted the first review—still delivering personalized, friendly service with a smile. While the resort evokes the time of “British Honduras” when Belize was a colony of the queen, we’re facing the Caribbean after all, so stuffiness can only go so far.

What has changed on the physical side is the addition of several new villas, so if you’ve got a big family or a group wanting some space and a kitchen, you’ll be set here. This was partly driven by destination wedding demand: there are a lot of weddings in this tropical paradise. Dive on the reef, then dive into marriage.

For more information, see our updated review of Victoria House in Belize.

Time is running out if you want to score four free nights in a luxury beachfront condo in Costa Rica. It sleeps six, so you can bring plenty of friends or family members along.

It’s our fourth anniversary, so we’re thanking all our readers with four nights in style. It’s a quick hop from where this condo is on Jaco Beach to animals, volcanoes, birds, surf, ziplining, and rafting.

Follow this link to see the details and sign up. It’s only open through the end of May, then we’ll pick a winner and they (or you) can make their reservations through luxury villa rental company Mead Brown.

Enter – 4th birthday condo giveaway

Luxury Latin America turned four years old this month, so we’re celebrating by giving our readers a chance to score four nights in the lap of luxury on the Pacific Ocean in Costa Rica.

We’ve teamed up with one of our long-time partners, Mead Brown Costa Rica Vacation Rentals, the leading villa vacations expert for the country.

The winner will receive four nights in a three-bedroom luxury condo facing the water at Vista Las Palmas. You can bring along five friends or family members if you want because here’s what comes with the unit:

The contest is open to all Luxury Latin America readers from now until May 31, 2012. Get your entry in pronto before you forget and spread the word to whoever else you would bring along.

See more details and the entry link here: Costa Rica 4-night Contest 2012

Punta del Este has long been the see and be seen hotspot in South America. In no other beach area do so many of the rich and famous from multiple countries gather to take a break from their roles as captains of industry,  fashion, and entertainment. We just posted a detailed round-up of real estate in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

For a long time those numbers were limited, but as much of the world has gotten richer—especially in the bottom half of South America—the number of people wanting to stake out their spot in this location has taken off. That has made a hot real estate market even hotter. Numbers are bandied about like “$5 million in sales per day” (I’ve seen higher reports in some magazines) and “sales up 110% since 2010.”

We’ve seen this kind of fast appreciation before in Latin America and often it hasn’t ended well. In some places prices have gone through a correction (Panama City, Roatan, Ambergris), in others they’ve fallen off a cliff (many coastal Pacific retirement communities). The difference in Punta del Este is that much of the new buyer money is not coming from the U.S., Canada, or even Europe. It’s coming from increasingly wealthier Brazilians, Chileans, and Argentines who look at real estate as their only good inflation hedge.

So while this market has some typical signs of a bubble, it doesn’t look like it could pop anytime soon. Many of the prime beach properties in Jose Ignacio are owned by old money families with no intention to sell. Even if you’ve got a few million dollars to spend, your options depend on knowing someone in the know who can access the unlisted listings. A large number of the buyers are from developing countries on the rise. Uruguay’s residency, tax, and banking laws are some of the most attractive in the world. In an area where every house and villa is occupied in high season, the rental market is excellent.

And what’s the alternative? Brazil may have better beaches, but there’s nowhere else on the continent where so many power brokers and tastemakers (and their families of course) mix it up on vacation.

See our full story on luxury real estate in Punta del Este.

Our latest tour feature, posted last week, is on getting away from the routine bus tours of Costa Rica and getting up close to the country’s abundant birds and animals on a more intimate basis. See the full story here: A Wealth of Wildlife in Costa Rica.

Fortunately, it’s easy to set up an exclusive experience in Costa Rica by setting up a custom tour with the likes of Geographic Expeditions or Mead Brown Vacation Villa Rentals. Or by staying at the best luxury jungle lodges in the country and using Nature Air to get from place to place.

Costa Rica is green, lush, and teeming with life. The government has done a far better job here than in most other countries of preserving green spaces with ample room for animals to roam. Plus some private owners, such as those at Lapa Rios, have bought huge tracts of land and left them alone so nature could take its course. It’s a breath of fresh air, figuratively and literally.