There plenty of tasteful, comfortable, eco-friendly luxury hotels in Costa Rica, so the competition is stiff to get your attention. Rancho Pacifico manages to stand out, however, and attracts plenty of guests who can afford to stay anywhere they want. Where else does the restaurant’s bathroom wall have thank-you notes from Sheryl Crow, Anderson Cooper, and Al Gore?

Rancho Pacifico has a whole lot going for it, which you can read in detail by clicking on the photo above or the full review link at the end. The big main draw, however, is the unbelievable location. Perched on a steep mountainside with the “Whale’s Tale” point extending into the Pacific Ocean down below, it’s a panoramic view that only a few other places can compete with.

This is not just a kick-back-and-admire-the-view spot though. The villas are surrounded by 250 acres of private jungle reserve, filled with all kinds of wildlife and teeming with birds. I saw hummingbirds, monkeys, and agoutis while out for a hike to the waterfall pictured here. I checked out toucans, hawks, and a hummingbird without even leaving the restaurant deck.

There’s a whole story behind the careful construction of this hotel and the individual rooms and cabins here are quite architecturally interesting. Thankfully for a place reached by four-wheel drive, the food and cocktails are excellent too. To get the full scoop, check out our review of Rancho Pacifico in Costa Rica.

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.

If any country has proved that luxury guests are willing to pay for hotels that are taking care of their environment, it’s Costa Rica. Monte Azul Boutique Hotel, situated on 125 acres in the foothills of the country’s highest mountain, this is luxe lodging that’s really green. Most furniture found in the rooms is designed and produced on site using salvaged, recycled and certified woods. The organic produce and organic coffee served here are grown on site. With composting, furniture made from salvaged wood, and a reforestation nursery, you can feel confident that you’re staying at a place that works in harmony with its surroundings. If you stay here, you’ll even have a tree planted in your name.

Monte Azul is a big step above most nature lodges though in terms of aesthetics.

Stretching the creative element to new heights and placing the Monte Azul Boutique Hotel in a category of its own is the fact that all spaces are regularly curated with fine art by both national and international artists. Many pieces are produced in Monte Azul’s on-site artist-in-residence program and some travel to the Monte Azul Contemporary Art (MACA) gallery in New York City. Inspired by the natural surroundings and the local community, the artwork adds a new dimension to your experience. In your room, there are halogen lights to illuminate the art and a pricelist with artist biographies.

Because the public and private spaces function as galleries, they are continually changing; you can request that your room be curated with a particular artist, or you may discover new fine art pieces on a return visit.

There are only six casitas and villas in this huge expanse of property intersected by wildlife trails and streams. The top choice is Casa Palo Alto, a 3,300-square-foot home with three bedrooms, a huge upper terrace lining the open and expansive indoor living area, another lower terrace, and a pool area. See our extensive detailed review of Monte Azul Hotel in Costa Rica.

See more reviews of the best hotels in Costa Rica

As I mentioned in an earlier post specific to Latin America, I attended the Luxury Travel Expo last week and got to hear what people in the industry had to say about the state of upscale travel in late 2009.

They were more upbeat than I expected, especially since travel to Europe has fallen off a cliff and the convention/incentive market is having a terrible year. And of course there are too many new hotels and too many new cruise ships for any of them to be much more than half full without major discounting. (Tough for them, good for you. There are some amazing deals on sites like LuxuryLink.com.)

Besides the obvious search for value though, lots of other interesting luxury travel trends came out that I thought were newsworthy.

1) More family travel
It used to be that “luxury” and “family travel” didn’t mix much, but that has changed in a big way. People are having kids later, they’re having fewer of them, and the grandparents often have more money than the parents do. I started noticing this shift a couple years ago when I’d go to a Four Seasons and find the pool packed with kids, but this has extended to safaris, soft adventure trips, and nature excursions. African safari operator Micato said in a panel discussion that their family travel bookings had gone from 10% to 35% in eight years. This bodes well for villa rental places and small-ship cruises, but not so well for cookie-cutter hotels that think connecting rooms are going to be enough to serve this demand.

2) Deeper travel experiences
It used to be that bragging about shopping in Paris or Milan was what you did to impress the neighbors. Now it’s more likely to be that you visited some place they’ve never even heard of or you did something worth talking about on your vacation. Adventure travel is way up, volunteer travel is way up, and travel to former pariah destinations is way up—to places like Colombia, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Luxury travelers are becoming more like backpackers—wanting to mingle with real people and get authentic experiences instead of just being sheltered away in an artificial world.

3) Rising influence of green hotels and travel
Have you been paying more attention to the environmental practices of the hotels where you stay? If so you’re not alone. Tour operators are finding that guests are becoming steadily more demanding about how “green” the hotels are where they stay and are no longer looking at “luxury” and “eco-friendly” as being different things. Since Costa Rica is considered the birthplace of eco-tourism and a large portion of trips to Latin America are by nature lovers, parts of the Americas are perceived as being in better shape than many other parts of the world in this regard.

What has changed in what you are looking for when you travel now? What are you willing to pay more for…and not?