We ended up spending our days walking along the beach in the rain, reading in our room, sipping cold drinks at Koko and driving around to create little excursions, taking in the animal sanctuary and chocolate museum (I use the term lightly). The service we got at Numu – the open-air restaurant, was indifferent at best and perhaps my frustration with the weather may have infiltrated my impressions of the resort itself. Staff are competent, yet nothing to write home about. The rooms at the Le Cameleon are set around a decent sized pool and the private beach and beach club are situated across the road, a perfect retreat if the sun had been shining. Worst of all, every mark and scruff just gets further heightened to make the interior look tired and worn out. The reality is, an ‘all-white’ design sensibility is an acquired taste and not very practical. Each completely white room is intended to be a blank canvas for enjoying the riot of colour and greenery just outside your window. We weren’t a fan of our room, although we did get the design concept. Billed as a 23-room boutique hotel, the exterior flora and fauna were full of hidden delights elaborate tropical flowers, multi-colour birds and dozens of indigenous neon frog species. Our home in Puerto Viejo was Le Cameleon resort, set in immaculately maintained tropical gardens approximately 3 km outside the main town hub. We hit torrential rain halfway through our drive from Manuel Antonio and it ended up being an unwelcome guest for the remainder of our stay. There was only one problem: tropical rainstorms. And despite the treacherous, nail-biting nature of the drive, we thankfully got to have an experience much more in-tune with the ‘Pura Vida’ lifestyle we’d heard so much about. Keen to have a contrasting view to our Manuel Antonio experience of Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, we took on a 7-hour epic drive through mountainous roads, thunderstorms and some of the worst pot-holed roads ever encountered, to spend a few days in Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean side of the country.

Le cameleon puerto viejo