The dreamy concept of “luxury” in the humid jungles of Costa Rica just might clash with reality, despite what glitzy Instagram reels might suggest. One cannot be shocked when a spider the size of a cantaloupe brazenly crawls along the edge of the Infiniti pool before you, or if a giant millipede slithers across your terrace while enjoying a morning cappuccino. At times the rain, the all-encompassing wet of the tropics, may fuel a curmudgeon’s grump. And simply getting to your remote destination from the Central American country’s twin major airports can seem like an Odyssean affair in itself—an epic journey of buses, ferries and damper-challenged taxis laboring over pitted roads that will test the patience of most adventurers. To be totally honest, a Costa Rican jungle vacation is not for everyone.
But for some, to be sure, it is heaven. Or better said actually, a Garden of Eden. Simply because of the Genesis-level wildlife that scurries, swings and flaps from all directions. When you stand in the solace of your private terrace and stare out to a rolling canopy of jungle, listening to the frogs chirping and cicadas chittering through the dense jungle, every minute of the long trek becomes worth it. The scene that plays out before you so raw, so abundant of nature, you almost expect to hear Richard Attenborough narrating the King Vulture soaring overhead.
And yes, there are hours when torrential rains soak the mountain fat, and it is all wonderful and sublime and at times even terrifying. But the drama makes you feel alive. And the flip-side of the coin from those lightning storms are other moments, like mornings when we awoke to a sky so Halcyon bright it appeared like one of those movies when the hero dies and transitions to Saint Peter‘s Gates, eyes flooded in golden, unreal light. If that vision is the sort of thing that gets you off, then Costa Rica’s Hotel Three Sixty is for you.
Sitting nearly 1,000 feet above the South Pacific Puntarenas coastline on a private 58-acre rainforest reserve, the adults-only Hotel Three Sixty was conceived as a mountaintop sanctuary where sweeping views, impenetrable tranquility, and excellent service—especially in Costa Rica, where the pura vida philosophy can feel at odds with lofty American expectations—do your vacation’s heavy lifting. The boutique hotel is small in scale, just a dozen villas, but massive on horizon and architectural design.
After a long drive to this remote jungle—although there is a small airport nearby for puddle jumpers to save time—we arrived through the canopy into a breezy, sculptural lobby that frames the coast like a cinema screen. A dry pool of polished stones plays central hub in the courtyard… at least till the rains come, when it transforms into a tropical fountain. An open-air lobby, curving infinity pool, Kua Kua restaurant and 360 Bar surround it, positioned so the sapphire Pacific and emerald mountains play both centerstage and backdrop in every direction.
From there paths lead to freestanding villas where floor-to-ceiling sliding doors dissolve into your magical terrace; outdoor showers borrow the forest as a “feature wall,” and custom furnishings keep the palette tropical-modern rather than rustic. The rooms are large and well equipped with firm king-size Simmons Beautyrest Recharge mattresses and potent air conditioning. But the real stars here are the aforementioned terraces—you’ll spend every free moment possible on your 130 square-foot balcony, greeting mornings with breakfast delivered to your room (fresh juices, coconut water, well-cooked farm eggs, French toast piled with fresh fruit, dark roasted Costa Rican coffee, etc.), all set to the ceaseless soundtrack of the jungle.
The guiding hand here at the Hotel Three Sixty is its owner, founder and visionary Trevor Ling—an English expat who pivoted from three decades in wealth management to hospitality. Ling opened Hotel Three Sixty with investor friends in 2017/2018, and during a sunny lunch at Kua Kua he summed up its ethos as “authentic, laid-back luxury.” Translation: solace over opulent pageantry, nature over noise, and helmed by a staff who know when to appear and when to melt away into the ferns. Ling’s philosophy shows up in the intimate scale, the remote setting built high away from neighbors, and the sophisticated tone—utterly grown-up, but without any pretension. Or screaming children, arguably the best blessing of all.
Ling’s ethos also reveals itself in the property’s sustainability choices: minimizing the built footprint to under 8% of the land, using ecological products and toiletries from Costa Rican brand RAW Botanicals in the bathroom, sourcing local ingredients for nourishment, and planting a tree for every night a guest stays through a partnership with One Tree Planted. To be transparent, we did lament the reliance on single-use plastics at times, including the morning coffee cup. Ling explained the at-times tenuous recycling complications of Puntarenas, so we’ll take his word.
The culinary heart of the Hotel Three Sixty is Kua Kua, aka “butterfly” in the local Boruca language—a nod to the transformational quality of the place. With well prepared sushi offerings, as well as comfort options like fried chicken sandwiches and tempura vegetables, Executive Chef Fernando Gamboa also leans on his Tico roots for plates like his whole snapper, oven baked and served with patacones and Costa Rican Caribbean sauce. The adjoining Bar 360 underscores the quality of Ling’s team, as whoever stocks the shelves with the Cascahuin Tahona Blanco—one of the finest, and tough to source tequilas on the planet—deserves a raise.
Architecture at the Hotel Three Sixty does more than hold up the walls; it is a storytelling device.
Back to the design for a moment. Architecture here does more than hold up the walls; it is a storytelling device. Understandable, as high from this epic vantage point—that which gives the hotel its name—you want the view to play protagonist, any structures hiding off to the side, staying offstage as much as possible. Our favorite spot being the infinity pool, wrapping the edge of the main building so the view shifts as you swim, providing a cool respite from the torrid jungle heat. Hours are happily invested here sipping cocktails, scanning details of the rainforest fading into the Pacific below. At sunset, the pool becomes a mirror for the Gauguin-painted sky.
The name isn’t marketing puff; you really do get 360-degree vistas that run from the famed white sand beaches of Manuel Antonio National Park in nearby Quepos down to the Osa Peninsula, one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. Boasting over 400 species of birds, its exotic wildlife also includes sloths, tapirs, squirrel and howler monkeys, and even the rare jaguar. But you don’t have to travel two hours to the Corcovado National Park to see some of these spectacles, as several afternoons a pair of yellow-throated toucans came and perched 20 feet from our tumblers full of Cascahuin. Frequently a troop of capuchin monkeys migrate their way to the surrounding trees, hanging from their tails and leaping with absurd agility from branch to branch, seemingly just for our amusement. Of note, the hotel just launched a partnership with Swarovski Optik supplying binoculars to better view these spectacles with greater detail.
As aesthetically rewarding as the location is, the Hotel Three Sixty’s sense of place in Costa Rica really clicks when you step off-property. Minutes downhill are Ojochal’s quiet beaches—Playa Tortuga for tidepool wandering, Playa Piñuela for low-key swims, and Playa Ventanas, where the jungle tumbles to a crescent of sand punctured by sea caves (the eponymous “ventanas,” or windows) that sigh open with the tide. The hotel sits close enough for a spontaneous beach run (about a 15-minute drive), but far enough to keep the soundtrack confined to birds and warm breezes.
Our favorite destination by far, however, was the Parque Nacional Marino Ballena (aka Whale Marine), one of Costa Rica’s most singular stretches of coastline—and the hotel’s crown jewel natural playground. At low tide, two beaches meet at Punta Uvita to form the famous “Whale Tail”: a sand-and-rock tombolo that from a birds-eye view looks exactly like its name implies. In the morning during the the ebb we strolled almost a mile out along the tail deep into the sea, turning for a breathtaking view of the palm-studded wilderness behind us. At flood, the two bodies of water zippered up to the shore determinedly, waves colliding with violence, erasing the tail entirely. A very cool aquatic event to witness while sipping coconuts in the sun. The fact that a geological “whale’s tail” somehow exists on a coast considered one of the best places on Earth to witness the migration of humpbacks wasn’t lost on us: it’s the sort of cosmic punchline that delivers this divine stretch of Costa Rica’s magic.
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