Six Nayara resorts span four distinct worlds: Arenal rainforest, a private Caribbean island, the Atacama Desert and Easter Island. Choose the destination first, then the resort that best fits how you want to travel.
Distinct destination worlds: Arenal rainforest, Caribbean island, Atacama Desert and Easter Island.
Arenal resorts share the same larger rainforest world, with three different ways to stay: Gardens, Springs and Tented Camp.
Adults-only choices: Nayara Springs in Costa Rica and Nayara Bocas del Toro in Panama.
In short: Choose Arenal for rainforest, wildlife, and natural hot springs; Bocas del Toro for adults-only overwater Caribbean life; Alto Atacama for desert exploration and world-class stargazing; and Hangaroa for the moai and living Rapa Nui culture.
The clearest way to choose a Nayara resort is to imagine the moment you want to remember: a sloth moving through the trees at breakfast, the Caribbean beneath an overwater villa, Saturn's rings through a telescope, or the moai on Easter Island.
All six resorts share a philosophy of place-led design, nature, culture, and attentive hospitality. The journeys themselves are fundamentally different. Choose the world first, then the way you want to stay within it.
Arenal is the one destination where choosing the landscape does not finish the decision. Nayara Gardens, Nayara Tented Camp and Nayara Springs share the same rainforest in Arenal Volcano National Park.
The rainforest is the destination. Guests across the Arenal properties experience the wildlife-rich estate, on-site naturalist experiences including guided sloth and bird-watching tours, and access to Nayara's hot springs area. The property decision, then, is not about who gets nature. It is about how you want to live within it.
Freestanding accommodations sit among dense tropical gardens, and resort paths offer regular chances to see sloths, toucans, frogs, and monkeys between breakfast, the pool, and an excursion.
Arenal Pool Casitas and Rainforest Pool Casitas provide generous indoor-outdoor space, private plunge pools and flexible layouts that keep younger children close to their parents while giving families room to settle into the rainforest.
Reached across a footbridge through the rainforest, Springs is composed of 35 freestanding villas. Each has a terrace and a private plunge pool fed by natural hot springs.
Breakfast can be served at the villa, while the open-air spa, yoga, and adults-only rhythm reinforce its position as Nayara's wellness flagship. The only Michelin Three-Key Resort in all of Central America.
Tented Camp rises on stilts above a reforested hillside, with Arenal Volcano views and private plunge pools fed by natural hot springs. A Nayara Tent suits a couple or small family.
Family Tents add a separate room with two queens for older children, while Grand Tents and private residences serve extended families and groups. In 2026, Travel + Leisure readers ranked Tented Camp first in Central America and No. 28 among the world's hotels.
Do not assume Springs is automatically the only romantic choice. Gardens and Tented Camp can both be deeply romantic. Springs is the clearest recommendation when an adults-only environment, privacy, wellness and fine dining are priorities. Tented Camp offers a highly private luxury-tent experience above the rainforest, while Gardens combines private accommodations with the same wildlife-rich Arenal setting.
Read our guide to family travel in Arenal or explore Nayara's adults-only resorts for romance.
The intimacy of your own secluded hotel, with the experiences of three world-class properties within reach.
At Nayara Gardens, Nayara Springs and Nayara Tented Camp, each property keeps its own character and quiet, yet guests share one larger world of rainforest adventure, wellness and dining. Everything is within reach, from yoga and spa rituals to open-fire cooking at Tented Camp, the broader restaurants at Gardens and the more intimate dining world of Springs.
You are not choosing between three hotels. You are choosing one interconnected destination. Amor Loco remains adults-only, and some restaurants require reservations. Forest to Table maps the full culinary landscape.
The overwater villa no longer requires crossing the world. For travelers from North America, Bocas offers the experience within the Americas, without the long-haul journey to the Maldives.
Overwater villas sit directly above the Caribbean, with the sea beneath the bedroom and terrace, while the resort occupies a private island where rainforest, mangrove, reef, and Caribbean ecosystems meet.
The island, however, is only the beginning.
Guests can arrange a private boat and captain to dock directly at their overwater villa. Leave when you want and shape the day around the water, weather, and what you want to explore. Professional guides bring context to the archipelago, and you can also arrange private guiding.
Head toward Zapatilla's beaches and reefs, explore mangrove channels, snorkel among tropical marine life, or go farther with a scuba-diving excursion. When conditions and itinerary allow, more ambitious exploration can extend toward the remote waters around Escudo de Veraguas.
Not every day in Bocas needs a boat. Kayaks and paddleboards let guests explore the calm Caribbean waters around the island at their own pace, along the shoreline and through the mangroves, directly from the resort. It is a quieter way to experience Bocas: no itinerary, no departure time, just the freedom to get on the water when you want.
The overwater pool villas are approximately 1,100 square feet, with private saltwater pools, broad decks, and direct access to the Caribbean. Choose them for constant contact with the water and the freedom to have a private boat and captain arrive at the villa.
Treehouses rise into the canopy and exchange the open-water horizon for mangrove, forest, and ocean views. Choose them for height, vegetation, and greater visual seclusion while remaining on the same private island.
Dolphin Bay is known for its resident bottlenose dolphins, making it one of the archipelago's signature wildlife experiences. Late in the day, a private boat, dolphins in the surrounding water, and the Caribbean changing color toward sunset create one of Bocas's most romantic outings.
Snorkeling opens the shallow reefs to almost anyone, while scuba diving allows certified divers to explore farther beneath the surface with professional operators and guides.
After dark, bioluminescence reveals another layer of the archipelago, turning the water itself into one of Bocas's most distinctive natural experiences.
Nayara Bocas del Toro holds Two MICHELIN Keys, and Condé Nast Traveler readers named it the #1 resort in Central America in the 2025 Readers' Choice Awards.
The Atacama is often described as otherworldly. That is accurate, but incomplete. Within a single journey, the landscape can shift from mineral-striped valleys to red-rock plateaus, turquoise high-altitude lagoons, salt formations, volcanoes, flamingo habitat, and geyser fields. Then night falls over one of the clearest skies on Earth.
Altitude, extreme aridity, minimal light pollution and approximately 300 clear nights a year have made northern Chile one of the world's great astronomical regions. Nayara Alto Atacama has its own private observatory, where professional astronomy guides turn the night sky into a guided encounter with planets, star clusters, nebulae and the Milky Way.
At Rainbow Valley, exposed mineral layers turn the earth red, ochre, green, white and yellow. Moon Valley replaces color with wind- and salt-sculpted formations. Higher still, Piedras Rojas, Miscanti and Miñiques introduce intensely colored rock, turquoise lagoons, volcanoes and the vast horizons of the Altiplano.
Elsewhere, hypersaline lagoons support flamingos in one of Earth's harshest environments, while El Tatio reveals the desert's geothermal force as steam rises from a high-altitude geyser field at dawn.
Professional guides explore these landscapes and interpret the geology, ecology, archaeology, and altitude of the terrain. Guests can also arrange private guiding if they want the day's pace and focus built around their interests.
After the desert exposure, Alto offers a change of pace. The lodge sits within the Catarpe Valley oasis, where adobe architecture, gardens and water create shelter within the surrounding rock. You can spend the day among high-altitude lagoons and geysers, return to an oasis in the evening, and walk to a private observatory after darkness falls.
Catarpe rooms open to private terraces with desert views. The newly renovated Tilo suites add more space, an outdoor shower, and a heated private plunge pool. Both keep the emphasis on natural materials, quiet, and the valley beyond.
For travelers who keep a list of places they hope to see once in their lives, Easter Island may be the ultimate bucket-list destination. Few places combine such extraordinary remoteness with something as universally recognizable as the moai.
Ahu Tongariki, Rano Raraku and the ceremonial sites scattered across the island turn familiar images into physical scale. Standing before the moai raises the questions that photographs cannot answer: who created them, how they were moved, what they represented, and how they fit into the society that made them.
Rapa Nui is not the remains of a vanished civilization. The descendants of the people who created the moai still live on the island. Language, family histories, ceremony, art, and cultural memory continue.
That is why professional local interpretation matters. Rapa Nui guides transform monument viewing into a deeper story of Polynesian voyaging, adaptation, ceremony, outside contact, and cultural survival. Travelers can also arrange private guiding for a more personal exploration of the island.
UNESCO records roughly 900 statues and more than 300 ceremonial platforms across Rapa Nui National Park. Their scale makes expert interpretation essential, not optional.
The national park requires an accredited guide, and Hangaroa's programs can combine accommodation, meals and one or two half-day excursions per night. That structure reduces planning friction and gives the sites a human context.
Allow at least four nights. The island's principal archaeological sites, more remote landscapes and living culture cannot be understood as a rushed checklist.
Hangaroa sits on the island's western edge, close to Hanga Roa village. Its architecture draws on the Orongo ceremonial settlement, with curving forms, grass roofs, and textured natural materials that keep the building in conversation with the volcanic landscape.
The resort's relationship with the Hito family gives local Rapa Nui participation a structural role, while guided exploration points outward toward the people, landscapes and archaeological sites that make Easter Island unlike anywhere else.
Some Nayara properties become even more compelling when the second destination completely changes the landscape and purpose of the journey.
Begin in Arenal with natural hot springs, wellness, fine dining, and the privacy of Nayara Springs. Then move to an overwater villa on a private Caribbean island, where a boat and captain can dock at your villa and take you into the Bocas del Toro archipelago. One journey is enclosed by rainforest. The other opens onto the Caribbean.
Begin by looking outward from the Atacama Desert, exploring extraordinary landscapes by day and the universe at night from Alto Atacama's private observatory. Then fly farther into the Pacific to Easter Island, where the focus shifts to the moai, Polynesian navigation, and living Rapa Nui culture. One asks us to look beyond Earth. The other asks how people reached one of Earth's most isolated inhabited islands.
Digital Marketing · Nayara Resorts
Albert Ghitis leads digital marketing at Nayara Resorts, overseeing editorial and newsletter strategy, search and AI discovery, and paid digital media. He is also the host of Nayara Horizons: Beyond Travel, a podcast exploring the people, places and ideas shaping travel today.
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