Mar-a-Selva

12/10/2026

To everyone who has stayed at Mar-a-Selva — thank you.

The guest book by the door is filling up, and every page means a lot to our team. But the people planning their first trip to Costa Rica never get to read it.

If you've stayed with us and haven't left a Google review yet, we'd be grateful if you shared an honest one. It takes about two minutes, and for a small villa it makes a real difference.

→ https://g.page/r/CelFc85efW2yEBM/review

Gracias, and pura vida

11/10/2026

The birds that spend the summer in your backyard are spending the winter in ours.

The listening station in the trees above the pool logs every call on the hillside, around the clock. In one week in late September it picked up a Belted Kingfisher 21 times. In the fifteen months before that, it had heard one only 35 times. The northern migrants were arriving.

Which ones are turning up, and how the station knows:
https://maraselvacr.com/bird-migration-costa-rica-guanacaste-arrivals/

A Belted Kingfisher has been rattling along the shoreline below the villa all week. That is not remarkable in itself. What is remarkable is the arithmetic: the acoustic station on our hillside has recorded that species 56 times in its entire fifteen-month history, and 21 of those detections happened...

09/10/2026

Mahi mahi ceviche with a papaya and mango salad, straight from Pablo's kitchen.

Late October and November dates are open → maraselvacr.com

08/10/2026

The thing guests underestimate about a private chef isn't the food. It's never having to decide where dinner is.

Nobody in your group is on their phone at 5:30 hunting for a table for eight. No cars, no forty-minute drive, no kids melting down before the appetizers. Dinner happens on the terrace while the sun goes down over the Pacific, built around what your group likes and what came off the boat that morning.

What a week of meals from Pablo's kitchen actually looks like:
https://maraselvacr.com/private-chef-costa-rica-villa-sample-menu/

Ceviche, red snapper casado and lobster night. What a week of meals from a private chef in Costa Rica actually looks like at our villa.

07/10/2026

Fly into San José for a trip to this coast and you lose a day of your vacation to the drive. Fly into Liberia (LIR) instead and the villa is about 35 minutes away.

A driver we know meets you inside the terminal with your name on a card and takes the bags. After that, the house manager arranges every ride for the rest of the week: the catamaran out of Playas del Coco, the volcano, a night out in town. Nobody in your group has to be the designated driver.

Everything we tell guests before they book, in the order it matters:
https://maraselvacr.com/flying-to-liberia-costa-rica-lir-airport-guide/

Which US cities fly nonstop to Liberia airport, how long Costa Rica immigration really takes, and the 35-minute drive to Playa Ocotal.

06/10/2026

Char & Michael, June 2026:

"Kevin, Pablo, Brenda — you all are wonderful! You made our stay at Mar-a-Selva so very comfortable."

Every stay includes this team → maraselvacr.com

02/10/2026

Welcome to Mar-a-Selva. Kevin will take your drink order from here.

One guest family called his cocktail "best drink ever." We'll let you be the judge. Fall and early December dates are open → maraselvacr.com

01/10/2026

Last night at Mar-a-Selva: live guitar by the infinity pool as the sun went down over the bay. 🎶🌴 Live music can be arranged for your stay. Just ask us when you book. Private chef, full bar and a dedicated staff are already part of the experience. Our green-season rate runs through Oct 31. Book at maraselvacr.com

29/09/2026

Travel + Leisure asked more than half a dozen travel, retirement and wellness experts where someone over 50 should go to actually reset. They all landed on the same country.

The reasoning reads like a week on our hillside. Not spa regimens and step counts, but rainforest walks, wildlife you watch instead of chase, and hot springs a couple of hours up the road. Intrepid Travel's North America president put it this way: Costa Rica lets people "slow down without feeling like they're missing out."

That's the whole idea here. Four en-suite bedrooms above Playa Ocotal, a private chef who handles every meal, and a house manager who books the catamaran so nobody in the group has to. Grandparents and grandkids, one table, nothing to organize.

Worth a read: https://ticotimes.net/2026/09/19/costa-rica-wellness-destination-older-travelers

October and November dates are open → maraselvacr.com

25/09/2026

Fifteen minutes inland from our gate, in Sardinal, a farmer named Jose Flores Flores turned 119 in July. A local association is assembling the paperwork to ask Guinness to recognize him as the oldest man in recorded history. His ID reads July 11, 1907, though the record books haven't verified it yet.

His granddaughter told AFP how he spends his days: dominoes with the family in the afternoons, his programs on TV, a nap in the chair, the occasional wh**ky. At 105 he was still carrying a machete out to do chores. Asked for the secret, he credited God, and told young people to work the way he did.

Carrillo, our canton, is one of the five that make up the Nicoya Blue Zone, one of a handful of places in the world where people routinely pass 100. The plate above is roughly the local answer to why: rice, black beans, plantain, fresh fish, fruit, and nothing eaten in a hurry. Pablo cooks it on the terrace most days.

The story: https://ticotimes.net/2026/09/18/costa-rica-jose-flores-oldest-man-ever-guinness

October and November dates are open → maraselvacr.com