We were influenced by convincing marketing and a very misleading article in a certain "French sounding" US travel magazine, into believing we were going to be staying at hotel in a quaint small beach town. The problem is that it isn’t a quaint beach town, it’s a planned resort community which pretends to be a town. It's all a big, artificial somewhat soulless place, started in 2006, owned by 1 company, with a few noncompany owned businesses, that work as concessions within what is really a resort.
If you like early 2000's pastiche mediterranean architecture, you will love it. Personally, I think it feels more suited to Southern California outdoor mall architecture, than something that should have been "plonked" into a pretty Costa Rican bay. Why did they have to build this here ?
Interestingly, although described as a "mediterranean" town, we also were told that it was inspired by Cuban, Colombian, and Moroccan architecture, so it really is a bit of a "mash-up".
The Marketing is beautiful, really clever photography that show the resort finished, I just looked at the photos again on the website it gives no clue of the huge next phase of construction which is happening in the hills behind the hotel. Construction seems to go from 6.00am to 8.00pm 6 days a week by the way.
The first thing you see when you drive down the hill entering the resort, past the other hotel, the very attractive (modern ?) Chameleon Hotel is the construction spreading across all the hills to the right