Where Villa Costa Vida Sits
In the hills of Manuel Antonio, Quepos — roughly 500 m west of Hotel La Mariposa, on the ridge road that runs between Quepos town and the entrance to Manuel Antonio National Park. It looks south-west over rainforest to the Pacific and the park’s headland.
Manuel Antonio is the most-visited stretch of Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast, and it works differently from the Costa Ballena villages further south. The ridge road is lined with restaurants, small hotels, a gym, a spa and a yoga studio; the beaches and the national park entrance sit at the bottom of the hill. Villa Costa Vida is set into that ridge, high enough that the view runs uninterrupted over the canopy to the water, close enough that a good deal of daily life is reachable without a long drive. The villa’s own listing describes it as walkable to beaches, restaurants, a gym, a spa and a yoga studio — true in the literal sense, though the hill is steep and most groups still use a car or the team’s drivers for anything with luggage, shopping or small children involved.
This places the villa about an hour and a half north of the Uvita and Dominical homes that make up most of this collection. If you are weighing Manuel Antonio against Costa Ballena, the short version is that Manuel Antonio trades seclusion for convenience: more restaurants, more infrastructure, more people, and a national park at the end of the road. For the southern alternative, see Where You Are: Costa Ballena.
Arrival & Access (No 4x4)
No four-wheel drive is needed. The road to the villa is paved the whole way, and there are three parking spaces on the property — five covered spaces when the Villa Tower is included.
This is worth saying plainly because it makes Villa Costa Vida an outlier in this collection. Nearly every villa in the Pura Villas portfolio sits at the top of a steep, unsealed jungle track and genuinely requires a 4x4 — a recurring source of surprise for guests who booked a compact rental car. Costa Vida does not. A standard saloon or a minivan reaches the door, which matters for large groups arriving in shuttles, for anyone with mobility limitations, and for the simple question of how many vehicles a party of thirty needs. See Villa Access: which villas need a 4x4 for how the rest of the collection compares, and Roads, Rental Cars & Transportation for driving in Costa Rica generally.
Most guests fly into Juan Santamaría International (SJO) near San José and drive down the coast — roughly three hours on good road. Quepos also has its own small airstrip, Quepos La Managua (XQP), served by domestic flights from San José in around twenty-five minutes, which large groups sometimes use to shorten a long travel day. The team can arrange private transfers, shuttles for a whole group, or a driver for the stay. For the full picture of routes and timings, see Getting Here: airports, drives & arrival.
Check-in runs from 15:00 to 19:00, check-out before 10:00. The team asks to be contacted about a week before arrival with flight details so the arrival and key handover can be arranged around your actual landing time.
Three Ways to Book It
The property is really two buildings. The main villa holds ten bedrooms and sleeps up to 34. The Villa Tower adds four suites containing seven more bedrooms, sleeping up to 18. Booked together as the full estate, that is seventeen bedrooms and up to 56 guests.
Most groups take the main villa on its own: ten bedrooms spread over four levels, with the pool, the kitchen and the main living areas. The Villa Tower is a separate, fully elevator-accessible building of four suites — including an accessible suite and a penthouse — which can extend the party, house an older generation on a single level, or accommodate staff and organisers for a retreat. The full-estate configuration is what makes this one of the few properties on this coast that can hold a corporate offsite, a wedding party, or several families under one roof without splitting across houses in different places.
Rates differ by configuration and season, and are quoted live rather than published here — see the main villa or the full estate on puravillas.com, or ask the team.
The House & Its Design
About 11,000 ft² of built space on a 15,000 ft² plot, arranged over four levels down the hillside, with roughly 1,000 ft² of terrace and an entrance on the upper floor.
The villa is contemporary rather than rustic — clean lines, wide openings, and rooms that are organised around the view rather than around a corridor. Because it is built into a slope, you enter on level four and descend: the main living, dining and pool level, then bedroom levels below. A lift runs through the building, which is unusual here and does a great deal of quiet work when a group spans several generations.
Living space is generous and largely open, with indoor and outdoor dining areas, a games room with a ping-pong table, a laptop-friendly workspace, and terraces on more than one level. Air conditioning is installed throughout and there are sixteen ceiling fans; the open areas are designed to work on cross-breezes as much as on refrigeration.
A Closer Look
A few moments from around Villa Costa Vida — the pool and the headland, the open living levels, the terraces. (Listing photography, supplied by the property.)
Bedrooms & Sleeping Arrangements
Ten bedrooms in the main villa, most of them ensuite, sleeping up to 34 including a dedicated bunk area. The Villa Tower adds four suites containing seven bedrooms, sleeping up to a further 18.
Main villa — level 4 (the entrance level)
- Room 1 — king plus trundle, ensuite (3)
- Room 2 — queen, ensuite (2)
- Room 3 — king plus trundle, ensuite (3)
Level 3
- Room 4 — queen, ensuite (2)
- Room 5 — queen, bathroom outside the room (2)
- Room 6 — queen, ensuite (2)
- Room 7 — queen, ensuite (2)
- Room 8 — king plus double trundle, ensuite (4)
Rooms 6 to 8 share a connecting balcony, which tends to become the group’s informal meeting point.
Level 2
- Room 9 — two queen beds, bathroom shared on level 1 (4)
- Bunk area — three bunks, sleeping eight, shared bathroom (8)
Level 1
- Room 10 — king, or split into two twins, shared bathroom (2)
The shared bathroom on the lower levels is built for a crowd rather than a couple: two showers, two toilets and four sinks. Kings can be split into twin beds on request at no charge, which is worth asking for in advance rather than on arrival.
Villa Tower — four suites, fully elevator-accessible
- Suite 1 — queen (2); queen plus loft twin (3)
- Suite 2 — queen (2); queen plus loft twin (3)
- Suite 3, the accessible suite — two queens plus optional trundle in an open, step-free layout with an accessible bathroom (5)
- Suite 4, the penthouse — king plus one or two trundles (3); queen plus loft twin (4)
Pool, the View & Outdoor Living
A saltwater infinity pool on the main terrace, with the water’s edge set against the rainforest canopy, the Pacific and the headland of Manuel Antonio National Park.
The pool is the centre of the house in the way it usually is on this coast: breakfast beside it, the afternoon in it, and sunset watched from it. Because the villa sits high on the ridge and faces the water, the outlook is uninterrupted — jungle in the foreground, the park’s wooded point beyond, open ocean to the horizon. Sun loungers, pool towels, outdoor furniture and an outdoor shower are provided, and there is a barbecue and picnic area for groups who want to cook outside.
A jungle trail runs from the property to a seasonal waterfall — seasonal being the operative word: it depends on recent rain, so it is at its best in the green season rather than the driest months.
Kitchen, Food & Chef
A full kitchen equipped for a large group — oven, dishwasher, freezer, coffee machine, and enough crockery and cutlery for the house at capacity — with private chefs and pre-arrival grocery stocking arranged through the team.
At this size, most groups cook some meals and hand others over. The team can arrange a private chef for a single dinner or for the whole stay, stock the kitchen before you arrive so the first evening does not begin at a supermarket, and book restaurants along the ridge road, which has one of the better concentrations of dining in the country. Dining tables sit both indoors and out, and there is a minibar and a supply of wine glasses for the evenings that stay at home.
Retreats, Weddings & Corporate Groups
This is one of very few properties on the coast set up for organised group travel — a dedicated conference room, elevator access, and a capacity of 56 across seventeen bedrooms in the full-estate configuration.
The full estate is marketed for corporate offsites, wellness and yoga retreats, destination weddings, milestone celebrations and multi-family gatherings, and the infrastructure follows: a conference room for sessions and presentations, several distinct indoor and outdoor gathering areas so a group of forty is not all in one room, and enough bedroom variety to place couples, families and single travellers sensibly.
One practical note: event and party permissions vary by configuration and by date, and the listings are not perfectly consistent on this point. If your plans involve an event with outside guests — a wedding ceremony, a party with attendees who are not staying at the villa — confirm the terms with the team before you book rather than after.
Accessibility & the Elevator
The property is described as adapted for people with disabilities: a private elevator serves the building, and the Villa Tower contains an accessibility-optimised suite with a step-free open layout and an accessible bathroom.
Accessible villa accommodation is genuinely scarce on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast — most homes here are multi-level, built into slopes, and reached by rough roads, which rules them out before the front door. Villa Costa Vida is the exception on three counts at once: a paved approach, an elevator between levels, and a purpose-built accessible suite. For a multi-generational group travelling with a grandparent, or for anyone using a wheelchair or a walker, that combination is the reason to look at this house rather than another.
As always with accessibility, the details matter more than the label. If a specific requirement has to be met — a roll-in shower, door widths, a step-free route from the parking to the bedroom — ask the team to confirm it for your dates and your configuration before booking.
Service On Site
Daily housekeeping on weekdays, final cleaning and linens included, and a Pura Villas concierge who arranges chefs, drivers, transfers, excursions and pre-arrival shopping.
Bed linen is changed every three days and towels are provided; the final clean is included in the rate rather than added at the end. Concierge planning — tours, private chefs, transport, in-villa services — is handled by the team as part of the stay, and arrival coordination is arranged in advance so a group of thirty is not sorting out keys and directions at dusk. Babysitting can be arranged for an additional fee, and a crib is available.
Power, Wi-Fi & Practicalities
A solar system with a backup generator keeps power and internet running through outages — a meaningful detail in a country where short cuts are routine. Wi-Fi throughout, air conditioning throughout, sixteen fans.
Other practical notes: no pets, and no smoking in the estate configuration. There is a safe and a laptop safe box, a washing machine and dryer, an alarm and a security system, and a first-aid kit. Parking is on the property — three open-air spaces for the main villa, five covered spaces with the Tower. Cancellation is free until 61 days before check-in, after which the usual staged penalties apply; the current terms are shown on the booking page.
Wildlife & the National Park
Manuel Antonio National Park is the reason most people come to this stretch of coast: 1,700-odd hectares of rainforest meeting white-sand beaches, with squirrel monkeys, capuchins, sloths and iguanas at close range.
The park sits at the end of the ridge road below the villa. It is small, busy and genuinely rewarding — go early, take a guide if you want to see more than the obvious, and expect capuchins to be interested in your bag. From the villa itself the canopy comes right up to the terrace, so a good deal of wildlife watching happens without leaving the pool. For how animals behave around houses on this coast, and what to do about it, see Wildlife & Living in Nature.
What to Understand Before You Book
Three honest notes: this is a new addition to the collection, not every bedroom is ensuite, and Manuel Antonio is lively rather than secluded.
It is new to us. Villa Costa Vida joined the Pura Villas collection recently, and we do not yet have a body of guest reviews from our own bookings to draw on the way we can for the older homes in this guide. Everything above comes from the property’s documentation and the team’s own knowledge of the house; where a review-based pattern would normally be quoted, we have left it out rather than filled it in.
Bathrooms are not uniform. Most of the ten main-villa bedrooms are ensuite, but Room 5 uses a bathroom outside the room, and Room 9, Room 10 and the bunk area share the large lower-level bathroom. In a house that sleeps 34 this is normal and the shared bathroom is built for it — but it is worth allocating rooms deliberately rather than letting a group sort itself out on arrival.
Manuel Antonio is not the Costa Ballena. If what you are picturing is an empty jungle ridge where the loudest thing is the howler monkeys, the villas around Uvita and Dominical do that better. Manuel Antonio is the most developed part of this coast: restaurants, hotels, traffic on the ridge road in high season, and a national park that draws crowds. What you get in exchange is that everything is close, the road is paved, and a group of thirty can eat out without a convoy.
Who Villa Costa Vida Suits (and Who May Prefer Another)
It suits large organised groups — retreats, offsites, weddings, multi-generational families — and anyone for whom step-free access or an easy road is a requirement rather than a preference. It suits couples and small families less well: at this scale you would be renting far more house than you need.
Choose it when the group is big, the logistics matter, and someone in the party would struggle with a steep track or a flight of stairs. Choose a smaller Costa Ballena home — Casa Amigos, Casa Colibri, Casa Solaz — when the point of the trip is seclusion, silence and a jungle ridge to yourselves. For a structured comparison of the collection, see Choosing a Villa.