The Harmony Hotel

Sensitively designed eco-hotel set in lush blooming gardens, with a spa, organic food and a white-sand surf beach

Harmony Hotel is not easy to reach, but it’s well worth the effort. An eco-hotel with exemplary credentials, Harmony sits in the jungle of Nosara - a coastal town made up of 4 beaches - and a few yards behind one of the most stunning surf beaches on the Nicoya Peninsula, Playa Guicones. It’s become the place to stay for city-dwelling surfers and grown-up Bohos who are too old - and too well-off - to stay in a grungy surf shack, but still want the feeling of a stylish, authentic hotel.

With its wood and wicker furniture, palm trees, freshwater swimming pool, and open air/open-plan layout, the hotel has a 50s Hawaiian resort feel. This is not, I emphasise, a luxury hotel: there are no plasma screen TVs or iPods in the 24 rooms, and service is more of the chat-at-the-breakfast-table variety than silent obedience. But if luxury means a healing centre, organic food, sunrise yoga on the beach before hitting the surf, a hotel with integrity, the sound of waves drifting you to sleep in a bed big enough to sleep 6, and a tropical paradise, then Harmony would more than qualify as a top-notch destination.

Highs

• A hotel in tune with nature – environmentally conscious, set in tropical gardens: howler monkeys, hummingbirds, iguanas
• The vegetable patch serves the kitchen, food is organic, shower water recycled, and the hotel contributes to local environmental and social projects
• New York levels of service delivered with ‘Tico’ charm
• Rooms have private patios, hammocks and outdoor showers
• Direct access to the beach down a pathway crowded on both sides by bush that sings and twitches with life
• A protected (no building allowed) 6km white sand beach for yoga, surfing, shell collecting, nature walks, horse and bike riding, cold beers at sunset

Lows

• An adventure to get there: most guests take a small plane from San José to Nosara. Once there, pot-holed, jungle dirt tracks are only suitable for 4X4s. The dry season means dust on the roads, the wet season thick mud
• Expensive compared to other hotels in the area
• Power cuts are a frequent occurrence
• With its rip tides, Playa Guiones is more of a surfing beach than a swimming beach
• Nosara is not so secret anymore: American retirees own many of the hotels, surf schools and restaurants