Overview
The guttural cries of the howler monkeys in the tamarind and
plum trees that grace the grounds of the Four Seasons Resort Costa
Rica at Peninsula Papagayo provide our favorite welcome back,
but that's once we enter the resort's gates.
If you've chosen an individual family pickup, (which is cost-effective
if you have a family of four to five), the pampering begins at
the airport in Liberia, the capital of Guanacaste province. A
resort representative handed us cold water bottles, most welcome
after our flights, picked our luggage off the carousel and carried
it to the van. The driver offered us cold towels and more water,
saying "con much gusto" ( with much pleasure). That
phrase, we heard over and over again from the resort's unfailingly
polite and friendly staff.
When families with a child ages 4 to 12 arrive, staff from the
Kids For All Seasons program greet the children, giving them information
about the children's program. Gifts await in the room for both
youngsters and teens.
The Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo has
145 guest rooms, 20 two- to three-bedroom homes plus 20 condominium-like
fractional ownership units. The property is not just another pretty
beach resort with a good children's program. The resort's location
and architecture set it apart. Situated in the midst of a tropical,
dry forest in Costa Rica's northwest Guanacaste Province, the
resort is the crown jewel -- in fact the only resort -- on the
Peninsula Papagayo, a gorgeous swath of land jutting into the
Pacific. The peninsula covers 2300 acres, and has 15 miles of
coastline with 31 beaches.
After environmental protests, developers scaled back the original
plan for Peninsula Papagayo, conceived as a resort and residential
(largely second homes) community, to 7,200 "keys" (guest
rooms and homes). With the economy's slow down, the other luxury
hotels slated to open have not yet broken ground (as of this posting),
and the residences number around 50. So what's open besides the
Four Seasons? A golf course, a marina, and the Prieta Beach Club,
an upmarket, beachfront facility with a pool, soon to open spa
and restaurant catering to homeowners and, for now, Four Seasons'
guests.
Hard facts about the development's future are difficult to come
by. No one seems to know or is willing to say what hotels, if
any, will join the Four Seasons or how many private homes will
be built. We have been told that 70 percent of the land will remain
as existing forest. That's good news since the natural landscape,
monkeys and all, is a big draw.
What this means for now is that as a guest of the Four Seasons
you have an extraordinary natural setting to enjoy, one that comes
with the extremely civilized amenities of a luxury resort.
The Four Seasons not only raises the bar on luxury, but it sets
a high standard for architectural integrity. Forget-about in-your-face
glitzy high-rises with glaring lights and paved over lawns. The
Four Seasons, poised atop a bluff, blends into the setting instead
of shouts.
To create this effect, architect Ronald Zurcher, a native Costa
Rican, combines indigenous forms, earth and palm tree colors,
soft lighting and clever positioning. The low-rise brown and green
buildings hug the slopes below the tree line so that the foliage
helps obscure the structures. Carefully created rooflines echo
natural shapes. Some roofs angle upward like butterfly wings;
others curve like the rounded back of an armadillo.
That's particularly fitting in an ecologically sensitive country
that protects more than 25 percent of its land in parks, forests
and reserves. Costa Rica, with its 850-plus species of birds and
hundreds of species of mammals, serves as the quintessential inspiration
for all those theme park jungle rides in which toucans pop out
at you through twisting vines and monkeys chatter overhead. Except,
in Costa Rica, you get to enjoy the real thing.
That brings us back to the howler monkeys. At first, my daughter
thought they sounded like Jurassic Park dinosaurs. We soon became
acclimated to their throaty cries, listening for the monkeys in
the morning while we ate breakfast on our balcony and searching
for them in the late afternoon in the trees outside the spa and
near our room. It's rare -- and wonderful-- to enjoy five-star
luxury and wild monkeys too.
Written by Candyce H. Stapen
