At Nayara Alto Atacama everything you see by day is brown and rust-red sand and rock. The air is dry and thin, horizon lines stay clean, and the Catarpe Valley reads as a simple palette of earth and light. Then night falls, and the landscape turns black. Artificial light drops to a minimum, and the Milky Way stretches from ridge to ridge revealing the world’s clearest skies.
In Costa Rica, the first impression is green. Layers of leaves, mist, and moss within site of Arenal Volcano. Paths between villas feel like narrow tunnels through vegetation. Hot springs steam in the cool air and birds stitch sound through the canopy.
In Bocas del Toro, rainforest meet reef and green meet blue. Water below your overwater villa shifts from pale turquoise over the reef to deep navy where the sea falls away, while mangroves and rainforest close in at the edges.
For us, these are not postcards. Brown, green, blue, and black describe four different workloads for the nervous system. Deserts strip the visual field to light, rock, and distance. Rainforests overwhelm it with biodiversity, humidity, and sound. Oceans offer rhythm, horizon, and immersion. Dark skies change what the brain does with scale and time.
Treating “nature” as a single ingredient flattens what the research and lived experience both show: the body reads each ecosystem differently. Read on to see how nature-based wellness at Nayara is painted in brown, black, green, and blue.
Brown: Atacama Desert by Day
Across the deserts of the world, true oases are rare: living ecosystems where water, vegetation, and ancient human settlement coexist in harmony. In South America, only one luxury lodge lies inside such a landscape: Nayara Alto Atacama, set within the fertile Catarpe Valley at the edge of Chile’s Atacama Desert. Here, adobe architecture and native gardens blend seamlessly with the cliffs and streams of a real oasis, creating a setting unlike any other in the region.
By day the desert setting feels stripped back to its elements. You step out from low adobe walls into a valley of rock, sand, and sky. The palette is almost entirely brown, with green held close in native gardens and vegetable plots. Paths run past small pools, terraces, and cactus beds toward dry riverbeds and distant ridges.
Buildings sit low and follow the contours of the valley, using earth-toned adobe and stone so that walls blend into the canyon rather than standing out against it. Gardens are planted to frame views rather than block them, and pool areas are tucked into sheltered courtyards where water and rock stay in balance. The result is a daytime environment that keeps mechanical input low and lets light, air, and land do most of the work.
For guests who arrive from dense, overstimulating cities, that combination of brown earth, open space, and quiet can feel like taking off a pair of heavy headphones they did not realise they were wearing.
In this daytime frame, the Atacama functions as our brown space. It is the place in the Nayara portfolio where simplicity, dryness, and clean views give the nervous system a low-input environment to recover from the chronic overload of dense urban life.
The Science
When the sun drops behind the ridge at Nayara Alto Atacama, the desert trades brown for black. Artificial light across the property stays intentionally low. Pathways are lit just enough for safety. Rooms use warm, carefully directed fixtures rather than bright, upward-facing beams. Once your eyes adapt, the sky takes over as the main feature. And that black sky is not only an aesthetic asset. It is a health input
For most of human history, darkness was normal. Night arrived, the horizon dimmed, and the stars took over. People navigated, told stories, and measured time by what they saw overhead. Today that baseline has shifted. Artificial skyglow has been increasing by roughly 7 to 10 percent per year in recent years, which means the number of stars visible to the naked eye is falling generation by generation. (GFZ+1)
In many cities and suburbs, the Milky Way is no longer visible at all. A global atlas of night sky brightness estimates that more than 80 percent of the world’s population now lives under some degree of light polluted sky, and in parts of North America and Europe that figure is effectively universal.
These black skies over the Atacama are our night-space counterpart to the brown daytime desert. Together, they form a full 24-hour environment for clarity, sleep support, and emotional reset, built from light, dark, and the absence of urban noise rather than from equipment or screens.
The Science
Green: Rainforest Wellness in Costa Rica
Walk out of your villa in Arenal and you are in the color green. Not a single shade, but layers: broad leaves at eye level, moss on trunks, epiphytes in the branches, a canopy that filters light into shifting bands. Air feels thicker here. You hear water before you see it. Bird calls overlap with insect pulses and the low rush of a nearby spring.
Life here follows rainforest timing. Morning yoga in an open-air pavilion overlooks the canopy. Movement stays slow and deliberate, synced to birds and wind. Sound healing in our yoga pavilions overlooking the canopy carries a double soundtrack: singing bowls close by, water and forest beyond. In the shared hot springs, conversations drop in volume without effort. Guests sit in thermal water, half-hidden by plants, watching mist rise between trees.
Privacy is part of the effect. In Arenal, villas and tents are spaced so you can step from bed to pool without feeling observed. That intimacy is why we treat these spaces as more than amenities. They are small laboratories where green exposure, warm water, and quiet time reinforce one another.
For the full story in our companion blog: Why Private Villas and Hot Springs Plunge Pools Define Luxury in Costa Rica
The Science
Where Blue Meets Green: Bocas del Toro
Arriving at Nayara Bocas del Toro, the shift happens before you see your villa. The boat engine cuts, and the loudest sounds become water against the hull, wind in mangroves, and the occasional call of a bird. There are no cars and no roads on the this private island.
From there, blue and green pull you in different directions at once. Below the boardwalks and overwater villas, there is only the Caribbean. Around and behind the property, forest and mangroves close in. Guests experience both the calming effect of horizon and waves and the multi-sensory richness of vegetation and wildlife in the same setting.
Wellness here starts with that geometry. Overwater villas give you direct step-to-sea access for swimming, kayaking, or snorkelling among coral heads and seagrass. Treatments can happen on your private deck with water underfloor and horizon ahead, or in our new Treehouse Spa, suspended high in the canopy with views across treetops to the reef edge. The Treehouse Spa uses altitude to reframe that relationship. Treatments happen above the canopy, where you see both forest and reef edge in a single view and hear insects, birds, and low surf together.
The Science
Reviews of blue-space research in environmental psychology link regular time near coasts, rivers, and lakes with higher life satisfaction and lower psychological distress, even after accounting for income and urban form.
One synthesis outlines a “blue health” model where aquatic environments support wellbeing through stress reduction, physical activity, social contact, and better environmental quality (White et al., Environmental Research, 2020)
Nature-Based Wellness Meets Sustainability
Look a decade ahead and one pattern becomes unavoidable. The very things that make brown, black, green, and blue-green spaces so powerful for human health are under pressure. Night skies grow brighter as light pollution spreads. Deserts face changing rainfall patterns and heat extremes. Rainforests lose biodiversity to land use and climate shifts. Coral reefs and mangroves sit on the front line of warming oceans.
For nature-based wellness to stay honest, it has to confront that tension. A dark-sky stargazing session, a rainforest hot-spring soak, or a morning swim above a living reef can no longer be framed only as personal escapes. They are also moments that depend on complex, vulnerable systems.
In our view, the next phase of luxury wellness is not about more technology or longer treatment menus. It is about deepening this connection between personal restoration and environmental resilience.
At Nayara, that means two parallel tracks. First, continuing to refine how each ecosystem shapes your stay, so that a week in Atacama, Arenal, or Bocas del Toro feels less like a generic holiday and more like a specific intervention for your nervous system. Second, investing in the regeneration that keeps these color worlds alive, from reforestation and water stewardship, to solar panel projects and coral reef restoration.
The data is clear: these natural environments are critical for both ecological and human wellbeing, and that's why sustainability and wellness at Nayara are two parts of one story.
Protecting brown, black, green, and blue is not only an environmental gesture. It is the only way the experiences they create can continue to restore the people who seek them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is nature-based wellness? Nature-based wellness refers to health benefits that come from spending time in natural environments and designing stays around t hose settings. Instead of focusing only on treatments or equipment, it treats ecosystems themselves as the primary input for stress reduction, sleep support, mood, and cognitive recovery. Reviews of nature exposure and health summarise wide-ranging benefits for mental and physical wellbeing.
What do you mean by brown, black, green, and blue-green spaces? These are shorthand labels for the main environments our guests move through. Brown refers to the open, low-vegetation desert landscapes around Nayara Alto Atacama. Black refers to true dark-sky conditions at night, when artificial light is minimal and the Milky Way is visible. Green refers to the rainforest and canopy immersion around Arenal in Costa Rica. Blue-green describes the meeting of rainforest and reef at Nayara Bocas del Toro, where forest and sea are both present in the same frame. Each of these settings places different demands on the nervous system and supports different types of restoration.
Is there real science behind forest bathing, hot springs, and time near water? Yes, although methods and quality vary. Forest bathing studies show that short visits to wooded environments can reduce cortisol and blood pressure and increase parasympathetic activity compared with urban walks. Reviews of balneotherapy indicate that repeated immersion in warm, mineral-rich water can reduce pain and improve quality of life for some musculoskeletal conditions when used alongside conventional care. Blue-space research links regular time near coasts, rivers, and lakes with higher life satisfaction and lower psychological distress.
How much time in nature do I need for it to matter? There is no single rule, but one large English study of 19,806 adults found that people who spent at least 120 minutes per week in natural environments were more likely to report good health and high wellbeing than those with less or no nature contact, regardless of whether that time came in one long visit or several shorter ones For most guests, a week at any Nayara property comfortably passes that threshold, simply through daily walks, time on terraces, forest or desert activities, and time near water.
How do Nayara properties fit into this color-based framework? Nayara Alto Atacama is our primary brown and black space, with open desert views, minimal vegetation, and protected dark skies that align with attention-restoration and circadian findings from environmental psychology related circadian reviews. Nayara Gardens, Nayara Springs, and Nayara Tented Camp together form a green and green-blue rainforest circuit that aligns with forest-immersion research and thermal-water work on balneotherapy. Nayara Bocas del Toro is our blue and blue-green setting, echoing blue-space studies that link coastal environments with better mental health and life satisfaction.
Are these experiences medical treatments? They are not positioned as medical treatments and should not replace clinical advice. The research base indicates that nature exposure, forest immersion, thermal bathing, and time near water can support mental health, stress recovery, sleep, and quality of life, and in some cases help manage symptoms alongside standard care. Reviews stress that evidence is encouraging but still heterogeneous. Guests with specific conditions should follow guidance from their clinicians, especially regarding heat, exertion, and travel.
How is this different from a typical spa or wellness retreat? Traditional spa menus often start with treatments and add the setting later. Our approach starts with ecosystems and treats architecture, programming, and spa design as ways to deliver specific types of exposure to desert, rainforest, reef, and night sky. This aligns with work on wellness real estate and health-focused design, which highlights air, light, acoustics, and nature connection as primary health levers in buildings. Spa treatments at Nayara sit on top of that ecological base rather than replacing it.
Further Reading and Sources
Nature-based Wellness and Environmental Psychology
• Nurtured by nature
• Nature-based health interventions
• Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing
• Attentibon Restoration Theory and restorative environments
Brown & Black
• Light at night, chronodisruption, and health
• IPCC AR6 Working Group II report
• Climate change and ecosystems
Green & Blue
• Forest bathing and health benefits
• Forest-bathing and nature therapy review
• Balneotherapy and low back pain
• Mechanisms of balneotherapy