Back in December I spent a couple weeks traveling through Costa Rica. There’s an adventure tour story on the way and I added a few new hotels—see the Costa Rica category of this blog for links to those. But I also took some time to revisit some luxury hotel favorites and revamp older reviews.

For all the following, you will now find updated and expanded reviews, plus some new and better photos I shot while I was there. If you’re headed to Costa Rica anytime soon, I assure you that you can’t go wrong with any of these three fine resorts in Guanacaste, San Jose, and the Osa Peninsula.

The Four Seasons Costa Rica is in a class all its own. A high-end luxury resort with its own unbelievably scenic golf course. Two beaches, stunning views, a great pool complex, and one of the hardest-working executive chefs in the country.

If you travel to San Jose and want to stay in the city, Grano de Oro is a perfectly fine hotel. You can be just as close to the airport though at Xandari and feel like you’re in a real resort, with a hillside of plants, waterfall hikes, and a great infinity pool with a view. If you like color and personality in your hotel, you will fall in love with this artist-owned place and wish you’d booked a few more nights there.

Lapa Rios wrote the book on sustainable upscale jungle lodges and this pioneer is still hard to beat when it comes to communing with nature while enjoying guilt-free luxury lodging. I was blown away by the views and the abundant wildlife, plus there aren’t many lodges anywhere that have 1,000 acres of their own jungle surrounding their bungalows. Lapa Rios caters to couples, friends, and families equally well and it offers an experience you’ll remember for a lifetime.

After my December trip to Costa Rica, in the monthly newsletter I ragged on the international airport in San Jose as being a place with nothing to do but shop and eat American fast food. True, I didn’t have to spend two hours in the immigration line upon arrival like I did on my first visit a few years earlier, but it amazed me that the place has no bar and no sit-down restaurant.

Mead Brown Vacation Rentals replied back that they’ve got a solution to all this for upscale travelers. Starting now, anyone who rents a villa or condo through them receives complimentary passes to the VIP lounge at the airport. This is a big deal because even if you have elite status on an American airline or are carrying a platinum card from American Express, you can’t get in to the one and only VIP lounge in the whole terminal. (If you have Priority Pass though, this lounge is in the network.)

As the announcement stated, “Complimentary access through Mead Brown is particularly valuable because—in spite of the wide spectrum of airlines that now serve Costa Rica’s capital city—none of the major North American airlines has a dedicated VIP lounge.”

So for most foreign visitors, this is a benefit they could not get in any other way except buying a day pass. Believe me that unless you want to spend two hours buying coffee and duty free liquor, this will make your San Jose airport time fly by much more quickly.

To see what they have to offer, browse Costa Rica rental properties here or see our interview with Michael Brown.

The first time I visited Costa Rica three years ago, I saw way too much of it from the window of a van, while bouncing along bad roads. This time I vowed to spend more time where I wanted to be and to get a big picture view of the country from above. After four great flights on Nature Air, I’d definitely go the same route again.

Nature Air stands out in a lot of ways. It’s an independent operation (not part of a larger conglomerate) and is a carbon-neutral airline—the first one to be able to claim that designation. Whatever it can’t conserve or resuse, it offsets with carbon credits going to reforestation. I have trouble putting much faith in carbon credits normally, but in Costa Rica I saw a lot of reforestation work in motion, so it seems like more than an ambiguous concept.

The airline flies to 14 airports in its home country, plus three in Panama and one in Nicaragua. It hits all the places you would probably want to go, like Liberia, Tamarindo, Arenal, Quepos, Puerto Jiminez, Limon, and Tortuguero.

In a small country like Costa Rica, obviously these are not big jets making the runs. These are small prop planes holding either 7 or 19 passengers. Three of my flights were on the latter, but on my last one, from Quepos to San Jose, I was about to sit down as #6 when the pilot asked me to move—into the co-pilot seat! With a front view taking off and landing, that’s definitely a flight I won’t forget.

Don’t expect a lot of frills with these flights: that’s not the point. Many cost under $100 and none of them are very long. These are more like air taxis than commercial planes. There’s an in-flight magazine, but that’s about it. These planes are so small that the pilot just turns around and tells you how long the flight will be and if you’re stopping anywhere along the way to drop off and pick up passengers. Don’t worry—announcements are in both English and Spanish.

If the clouds aren’t too heavy, you’ll spend most of the time looking out the window anyway. This is a great way to see how lush and green the landscape is in Costa Rica and you can actually make out the topography and coastline that you’re seeing on a map.

When you go to book a flight on Nature Air, you’ll notice a wide disparity in fares. The two main variables are refund options and weight allowances. The weight allowances are so low at the bottom end that you pretty much have to be traveling with nothing more than an overnight bag: 15 pounds for checked luggage, 10 for your carry-on. If you have a laptop and an SLR camera in your carry-0n, you’re probably already over the limit. If you have these things plus a typical 22-inch wheelie bag, you’ll be coughing up an extra $40 at the counter. So get out a calculator and buy and pack accordingly after looking at the guidelines on their website.

Their Nature Vacations arm also books vacation packages with a variety of itineraries and styles (adventure, romantic, eco-tourism), all with domestic flights folded into the package prices. They know the country inside-out, plus the prices are competitive.

After leaving Playa Nicuesa I puttered across the Golfo Dulce to Puerto Jiminez and bumped my way up to Lapa Rios, this time with my wife and daughter with me. They flew in on Nature Air via San Jose, which is pretty painless considering how remote and wild this area is. It’s a rough road from there to the resort, but you soon forget all that.

Lapa Rios opened two decades ago as one of the pioneer eco-resorts in Costa Rica (and thus the world), showing that you could actually get luxury travelers to make a few sacrifices if you backed it up with a fantastic experience and good food. This is a sustainable lodge on 1,000 acres of jungle—much of it primary rainforest—but with a pool, full bar, hot showers, and comfy beds.

The rooms have terrific views of the canopy and the sea, but the main reason to come here is to interact with nature in some of the best-preserved jungle in Central America. I just popped in a few photos here to give a taste: a white-faced capuchin monkey, a toucan, and a snake spotted on a night hike we took with a guide. I won’t bore you with the whole slideshow, but we saw coatis, agoutis, hawks, spider monkeys, a coral snake, and too much more to even list. One day we spotted five different animals and birds just between the bungalow and breakfast.

I’ll be updating our review of Lapa Rios in the next couple weeks, but the bottom line is, this resort still lives up to the hype. Every guest I talked to was thrilled that they came there, which just about says it all.

You might notice a lag in posts on this luxury travel blog these days as I’m spending much of my time traveling through Costa Rica. My Osa Peninsula time has been almost totally off the grid. Is “going offline” the new luxury status update? I’m starting to think so as the guests I’ve been hanging out at these places are certainly more relaxed that your average vacationer who still has one foot back home.

One new eco-resort we’ll soon be adding to our Costa Rica hotels section is Playa Nicuesa, which is hands-down the most sustainable lodge I’ve been to that’s actually quite comfortable as well.

Running an eco-lodge in Costa Rica is like trying to run a brewpup in Colorado or a winery in Napa Valley: it almost qualifies as a competitive sport. Playa Nicuesa is the real deal though: minimal concrete, wood from sustainable trees, solar and biofuel power, and no power-sucking TVs. Heck, they don’t even use dryers for the linens: sheets and towels go into a passive solar drying room to let nature do its work. Anything that can be composted is composted and vendors must provide goods in reusable containers and baskets—no plastic bags.

You might not even notice all this though because the setting is so fantastic and there is so much wildlife around. Across the Gulfo Dulce from Puerto Jiminez in the Osa Peninsula, the resort can only be reached by boat. There’s a rocky black sand beach out front, a jungle in the back, and a river nearby that’s great for kayaking. Here’s an edited version of what I saw in just two days: wild pigs, agoutis, coatis, a baby crocodile, three kinds of monkeys, herons, lizards, tiny frogs, dolphins, and a sea turtle. Two days!

This resort may not be for everyone. You eat at set times at a long communal table (great food, by the way) and you are well off the grid here, so it’s not for those addicted to either privacy or social media. For nature lovers trying to keep their environmental impact to a minimum, it’s paradise.

Watch for our review in a few weeks.