Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, Hotel Review in Costa Rica

“Go go go,” urged the man at the table next to me, like he was rooting for his team in the playoffs. He wasn’t. He was cheering on the setting sun, which was slipping fast below the horizon and, it seemed from our vantage point, right into the Pacific Ocean. We were about halfway down a cliff at Ámbar, a tree house bar at the Ritz-Carlton Reserve’s newest hotel, Nekajui, on Costa Rica’s Peninsula Papagayo. The sunset had turned the whole sky a dark pink and cast a moody shadow over the flora-covered hillside and beach below us. It was quite a show, and the crowd—that is, 15 people at six tables under dim, rattan-covered lighting at the tented tree house bar—was loving it.

When the show was over, I polished off my Negroni sbagliato (remember those? Ámbar does indeed make it with prosecco, plus a hibiscus and mango leaf concentrate that cuts some of the Campari’s sweetness), and I climbed the 48 stairs up to the top level of the hotel. There, a family was taking in the sunset by the 70-foot-long infinity pool while a couple was cozied up at an outdoor table at Puna, the Peruvian fine-dining restaurant.

The next morning, I sent my mom to the spa for a 90-minute deep-tissue massage to thank her for babysitting the night before. I took my eight-month-old son to breakfast at Café Rincón, where the manager, Lindsay, brought over Costa Rican coffee grounds for me to smell as I selected my pour over du jour. My son, Rai, played with the menu, which had a map of where all seven pour-over options were from in Costa Rica. Time for another show: Lindsay brought over a clay vandola, a beautiful blue ceramic coffee-brewing vessel custom-made for the resort by a Costa Rican barista and coffee farmer. She lined the conical opening with a coffee filter, deposited the grounds, and poured in steaming water. My son kicked his legs excitedly, the eight-month-old equivalent of a standing ovation. (He’s still working on clapping, or he would have surely applauded.)

Properly caffeinated, I pushed my son in his stroller past the magnificent wooden suspension bridge draped over a cliff—connecting Puna and the main pool area with more out-of-the-way rooms—to the funicular. I loaded us onto the glass elevator that took us down, down, down the cliff to the beach club, narrating the view to my son as we descended: through the trees, we could see azure water lapping against a half-moon-shaped cove. Thirty seconds later, we arrived at Niri Beach Club, below the resort, where we grabbed a wicker couch facing the ocean, my son seated on the cushions, grinning, as we shared a watermelon juice and a Spanish tortilla (mashed for him, intact for me).

Obviously, carting a baby around a cliffside hotel isn’t easy, even when traveling, as I was, with a grandparent. It felt seamless at Nekajui because the service at Ritz-Carlton Reserve hotels is close to unmatched, which is the main reason I’ve been a fan of this brand since a stay at Mandapa, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Bali, in 2018. The ladies and gentlemen, as employees in the Ritz-Carlton eco-system are referred to, will move mountains for guests.

A woman next to me at Café Rincón mentioned the coffee would be great in an espresso martini—and 20 minutes later, one materialized in front of her. One night at dinner, a server picked up my dirty glasses (Rai’s favorite teether), cleaned them, and tightened the screws. When my mom, son, and I showed up at the pool on a particularly hot afternoon, an attendant encouraged us to take one of the empty cabanas so we could benefit from the ceiling fans. (At most resorts, if you sit at a cabana you haven’t booked, someone will come over and ask you to pay several hundred dollars to stay.) This isn’t preferential treatment, it’s par for the course at any of the eight resorts in this elite collection of hotels. The goal is to make guests happy, without nickel-and-diming them, simply by being kind and adaptable.

On my last day, I tried an outrigger canoe excursion, which started at nearby Pochote Beach, then brought us to a rocky cave beneath the resort, and to a nearby uninhabited island (one of two nearby Islas Palmitas, as the locals call them), where I snorkeled and swam. As we paddled along Huevos Bay, so named because sea turtles come to lay their eggs there, I asked my guide, Marlon, if he could drop me off at Niri Beach Club instead. From the water, I texted the butler assigned to our room and asked if he could escort my family down to Niri, and bring me a pair of shoes (I’d left mine on the beach when we started the tour). Done and done. Marlon changed course and we paddled our long, skinny canoe to the shore of beneath Niri. Marlon dropped me off with a drinking coconut, which he carved open with a machete, and a promise to send my sandals back to my room. I hopped off the canoe and walked up the sand to the wooden steps that took me to the beach club. I claimed the same couch Rai and I had the day before. By the time my brood arrived, our shrimp were grilling on the open fire, the tuna crudo had arrived dotted with chili crisp, and I was sampling a Milk and Honey cocktail with passionfruit, rum milk punch, and Costa Rican mead sourced from a brewery in San José. I took my son on my lap and showed him the coconut, which he immediately brought to his mouth and slurped from. Just a regular (near perfect) day at Nekajui.

Here, my full review of Nekajui, the newest Ritz-Carlton Reserve and the third resort on Peninsula Papagayo.

The Rooms

Nekajui has 107 rooms, including 27 suites, three treetop tents, and one grand villa with 10 bedrooms. My plus-two and I shared an 872-square-foot Ocean Vista room, which is an entry-level guest room with an ocean view. I think it would be perfect for a couple, but because I was sharing it with my mom and son, I found that the shower and bathtub were a bit too close to the sleeping area, though French doors help offer some privacy. For more space, I’d recommend the one-bedroom suites, which have a separate living room and a more removed bathroom—plus a marble plunge pool on the balcony.

The room design is very tasteful and, notably, prioritizes sustainability. Mine had a black concrete bathtub, rain shower, marble double vanity, and several wood features, including the outdoor couch, the headboards, and the French doors, made from trees that were cut down while building this hotel.

All the toiletry products are from a Costa Rican B-Corp brand called Aromas, and the citrus-and-bergamot scent is blended specially for the property. There’s also an Elchim hair dryer, which my mom was so taken with that she ordered one to use at home.

Food and Drink

There are enough dining options at Nekajui to eat here for a full week without repeating a dish or leaving the resort. All of the restaurants have different menus for lunch and dinner. The signature cocktail program is so extensive that there are about 70 made-for-the-resort cocktails in rotation at any given time. The mixology team is hard at work infusing, distilling, and dehydrating seasonal ingredients, including rare honey produced by stingless bees endemic to Costa Rica.

I started my days at Café Rincón, not only because I loved the coffee program, but for the dragonfruit bowl, a take on an açai bowl made instead with local dragonfruit and topped with fresh strawberries, banana, and granola. “You can go as healthy as you want or as restricted as you want here—and it’ll be just as delicious,” Lulu Elízaga, Nekajui’s executive chef, tells me when we shared a vandola of coffee one morning.

There’s also Puna, the Peruvian fine-dining restaurant helmed by chef Diego Muñoz, where my mom and I had scallop tiradito and umami-rich pork belly accompanied by an impressive selection of sake. For breakfast, the restaurant becomes Mirador, where I would highly recommend asking for a side of hand-sliced Iberian jamon with your avocado toast. Elízaga also has an anti-buffet concept at Mirador: tray-to-table dining, which comes with a bread course, a cheese course, mini parfaits, and a few scaled-down main dishes. (It’s basically a personalized buffet that comes to your table.)

Then there’s La Casona bar, which has a menu with “Costa Rican ingredients used in international dishes,” says Elízaga. She uses pejibaye, an orange-hued fruit from domesticated palms that grow wild in many Costa Rican backyards, to make hummus, which we sampled on our last evening while watching the sunset.

My favorite restaurant was Niri, which Elízaga calls simply “fun and delicious.” The Spanish-inspired tapas, including the classics like tortilla and patatas bravas, are excellent, as are the fresh-caught proteins roasted over the open wood fire; My mom and I had torched local red snapper one evening for dinner and flame-grilled prawns for lunch. The gazpacho was a big hit for Rai.

Activities and Experiences

There’s a bevy of excursions on the Peninsula Papagayo that guests can easily book at Nekajui’s Explorers Club. Options include: zip lining, coral planting, ATV off-roading, wildlife hikes to see monkeys, and the two-hour snorkeling and canoe tour that I tried. I paddled at the front of the Hawaiian-inspired outrigger canoe (a narrow canoe with an Ama stabilizer that balances the long vessel) with my guide steering us in the back. The snorkeling and ocean swimming were a treat, but the highlight was exploring a beach cave because the tide was out at 9:30 a.m. (by 2 p.m. that afternoon, it would be filled with water).

You’ve come to Nekajui not only for the resort, but for Papagayo’s phenomenal slate of outdoor activities. The peninsula has 15 miles of beaches and tons of wildlife including iguanas and monkeys—find T+L’s guide to the destination here.

The Spa

The 27,000-square-foot Nimbu Spa & Wellness has eight treatment rooms, six of which are built on stilts and feel like tree houses. What stuck out to me was every part of the spa experience comes with wild views. Even the outdoor waiting area, with a proper roof that actually staves off the hot sun, has uninterrupted ocean views, as do the sauna, steam room, and cold and hot plunge pools.

After my massage, my therapist wrapped a bracelet around my wrist with three tiny black volcanic rocks and a gingery-citrusy scent and brought me to the spa pool, which is Central America’s largest hydrotherapy pool, gazing out at the ocean and the two Islas Palmitas. The pool itself mimics the view: there’s a marble island in the middle of it, with five pods, each with different jets, some pummeling your legs with water, others with bubbles that come from the pool floor. After sampling all five jet offerings, I used the sea foam green-tiled outdoor shower, where a kind changing room attendant brought me a body scrub, shampoo, and conditioner.

Hanging at the spa pool, as opposed to the main pool, is one of my favorite resort hacks—because I tend to have the spa pool to myself. The drawback, of course, is that you miss out on a cheeky poolside lunch or, in my case, abandon the empty pool in pursuit of a club sandwich and a drink. Here, there is a simple solution: Nimbu has its own menu, with hearty bowls and salads, chilled proteins, juices, smoothies, and Champagne. I had a nourishing bowl with brown rice, avocado, sweet potato, and seared queso turrialba, which is similar to halloumi.

Family-friendly Offerings

My son and I toured the indoor-outdoor kids’ club, called Camp Nekajui. Books like “My First Surf Log” showed Rai what the future held, large pieces of dried seaweed offered a fun texture to touch, which made up for the baby sensory art class we were missing back in L.A. The outdoor part is a beautiful playground with an iguana-shapred slide. I was very charmed by how many kids I saw—we visited during spring break—because Nekajui feels like a resort that would be adults only. (And certainly, there are a number of adults-only refuges, including the spa, the picturesque adult pool, and the tree house bar.) On the sprawling lawn near our room, a gaggle of kids would play “Red Light, Green Light” at sunset. One evening at Puna, my mom, Rai, and I met a couple who proudly told us they had just hosted their two children and six grandchildren here for vacation, and they couldn’t wait to come back.

My top recommendation for families is a stay in the family tree house suite. The resort has three tree house suites, designed by Luxury Frontiers, which is the world’s top tented camp designer (also behind Naviva, A Four Seasons Resort and Nayara Tented Camp). One of the three suites has a primary bedroom and a second bedroom with a queen-size bed and two bunk beds.

Accessibility and Sustainability

The resort’s design incorporates 80 percent of the stone and 70 percent of the wood that was cleared when building the property. The culinary program is hyper local; they’re not sourcing ingredients you can’t find in Costa Rica; “We cook what we have in an extraordinary way,” Elízaga says. You won’t find caviar here, but you will find an entire menu made of Costa Rican ingredients at La Casona. They’re also teaching farmers in the area to grow crops the resort needs. Elízaga just walked a farmer through the process of growing white asparagus so she could use the produce in a specialty menu for guests celebrating a 60th birthday.

I wouldn’t recommend the resort for those with accessibility challenges. Guests in wheelchairs can enjoy certain parts of a resort—I navigated the two top floors of the property with a stroller using ramps, elevators, and a helping hand from the resort’s ladies and gentlemen. But the true charm of this place is taking the glass elevator down to the beach club, visiting the tree house bar, and walking the suspension bridge, all of which are harder to navigate.

Location 

To get to Costa Rica’s Peninsula Papagayo, travelers fly into Daniel Oduber International Airport in Liberia, the largest city in the Guanacaste province. The province, on the Northwest coast of Costa Rica, skirts the Pacific Ocean, and is home to bohemian surf towns like Tamarindo and Nosara. At Nekajui, you’re about a three-hour drive from Monteverde Cloud Forests.

Papagayo has three resorts and about 300 hundred private homes (some of which travelers can rent), and you can zip line, snorkel, canoe, kayak, and surf. Notably, Guanacaste province is one of the world’s top surf destinations, and Peninsula Papagayo has a SurfX school, which offers surfing classes for beginners as well as guided boat trips to world-famous surf breaks like Witch’s Rock and Ollie’s Point.

How to Get the Most Value Out of Your Stay

Ritz-Carlton Reserve is part of the Marriott Bonvoy program; the fact that you can book a resort of this caliber on a widely used loyalty network is a victory. At the time of publishing, the resort had been open for less than three weeks and was not yet part of a credit card rewards program, like American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts.

Nightly rates at Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, start from $2,390.