This ‘anti-resort resort’ is like being in Thailand, without the Aussies

Batman star Christian Bale was in town last week. Drew Barrymore the week before. And Mel Gibson used to own a $20 million mansion by the beach. But you sure wouldn’t know it.

The streets of this town, Playa Guiones, in this province, Nosara, just received their weekly helping of molasses (the by-product of the region’s sugar cane serves as a quasi-asphalt) to settle the dust because nothing’s paved with bitumen around here.

The Gilded Iguana, is about as close to the beach as it gets in Nosara: that’s 200 metres.

Narrow dirt roads run between a long, white-sand bay and mountains covered in jungle, where howler monkeys (the world’s fifth loudest animal) scream, and where occasionally – if you believe the locals – huge snakes like boa constrictors exit to find temporary homes within the cafes in town.

There are many hip places in Central America, but nothing’s hipper than Costa Rica’s Nosara province. It just doesn’t look like it. The New York Times calls Playa Guiones “the anti-resort resort” because there are no high-rise, no walled-off resorts, no McDonald’s, no Starbucks and no late-night beach bars. Nosara reminds me of Thailand, without any of the Australians. Located two-and-a-half hours’ drive south of Liberia International Airport, you might also take a small propeller plane from there to a tiny airport a few minutes’ drive from your resort (which means you could be in your room in less than four hours from the US).

If Hollywood is here, I don’t recognise its stars. On arrival into Playa Guiones, I’m surrounded mostly by attractive alternative types with yoga-fit bodies who wear next to nothing as they ride golf carts, quad bikes and bicycles down Playa Guiones’ quiet main street. The town is full of yoga studios and alternative health therapists: though we’re already located within one of the world’s five blue zones here – where people live the longest of anywhere on Earth. Just west of town, the beach stretches for five kilometres. Perfect waves are ridden here by surfers, and at sunset each evening, the whole town converges to watch the sun dip into the Pacific.

The Gilded Iguana

My hotel, The Gilded Iguana, is about as close to the beach as it gets in Nosara: that’s 200 metres. The Costa Rican Government acknowledged the region as a protected wildlife refuge in the 1980s, so strict laws keep the town smaller, and humbler, than its burgeoning reputation might otherwise allow it to be. There’s a biological reserve here too, home to 270 bird species, and off-shore is a marine sanctuary for everything from migrating whales to the second-smallest sea turtles on Earth.

That must be why it still feels wild. Streets are cut straight out of the jungle, and they’re so narrow that few cars enter. Instead I take tuk tuks to cafes and restaurants at the end of twisting, turning dirt trails through the forest. Locals on horseback pass by me on trails beside the beach, and there’s a sign warning about caiman (small alligators) just beside the sand.

Sunset by the beach.

I can walk just about everywhere. The beach is only a minute or so away, and just north of Playa Guiones I find somewhere even better. Playa Perada is a wide strip of beach where locals pull fishing boats up past the high-tide mark and the jungle grows so close to the water that the sound of the creatures in it hit me even as I swim. In that jungle are some of the best mountain bike trails in Central America, and the world’s longest zip-line.

The area has long been a conservation haven.

Nosara is a wellness magnet, and I am here with good intentions. My hotel has a yoga studio that looks like a glass cube built within a massive tree in a rainforest. It also has a surf club, where guests gather daily before and after sessions in the waves. There are more smoothies and green juices for sale than anywhere I’ve ever seen, even in LA. If the cocktails weren’t so damn good in open-air bars and restaurants built within the forests looking out over the sea, I’d probably drink more of them. But it’s a heck of a place to feel tropically tipsy as I wander, marvelling at how the jungle melds with the sea, watching pelicans surf the waves (yep, pelicans surf the waves here), and looking for creatures breaching from the sea. Gerard Butler’s in town, I hear on my last day, but I don’t spot him. Nosara keeps its secrets, even if Hollywood never can.

THE DETAILS

FLY

There are direct flights to Playa Guiones’ closest major airport (Liberia International) from LA, Denver, Houston, New York, Chicago and Miami with United, Alaskan Airlines, American Airlines and Delta (so fly direct from Australia to LA, or Houston, then onto Liberia International). Then take a shuttle for 2 ½ hours, terratournosara.com, or fly for 15 minutes, flysansa.com

STAY

The Gilded Iguana has 29 rooms and suites, private yoga or group classes, day spa, bar and restaurant, surf club and surf school, and activities. Rooms from $450 a night. See thegildediguana.com

MORE

nosara.com

The writer travelled courtesy of The Gilded Iguana.