Mexico, Costa Rica and Belize: beaches, rainforest, reef and colonial towns

Mexico, Costa Rica and Belize sit close together on the map, and a single trip can take in two of them, but they offer quite different things. Mexico is as much about culture and food as beaches, with colonial cities, Maya ruins and two very different coasts. Costa Rica is wildlife country, all volcanoes, cloud and protected rainforest. Belize is small and English-speaking, with a barrier reef running along its coast and Maya sites in the forested interior. What ties them together is a climate of wet and dry seasons, and that decides when each is at its best.

Mexico: colonial highlands and the Yucatán

San Miguel de Allende, a UNESCO-listed hill town of cobbled streets and galleries at around 1,900 metres, is one of the most rewarding places to start. Rosewood San Miguel de Allende is built in the town's colonial idiom a few minutes' walk from the central jardín, with courtyards, a cooking school and a rooftop bar looking across to the Parroquia's pink spires. Even summer evenings are cool, and the season's rain tends to come in short afternoon bursts.

On the Yucatán peninsula, Chable Yucatan occupies a restored nineteenth-century henequen hacienda about forty minutes from Mérida, with casitas, each with a private pool, spread through the gardens and a spa built around a natural cenote. Uxmal and the Puuc Route are within a day's drive, and Chichén Itzá is around two hours east. April to June brings fierce heat inland.

On the Caribbean coast, Hotel Esencia was built as a private seaside estate at Xpu-Ha, and the feeling has stayed: a colonnaded main house on one of the softest, least developed beaches of the Riviera Maya, with Playa del Carmen and Tulum each a short drive away.

Across the country on the Pacific side, Las Ventanas al Paraiso, A Rosewood Resort has set the standard in Los Cabos since the late 1990s, its low white buildings descending in terraces through the desert to the Sea of Cortez, and its suites known for their fireplaces, roof terraces and telescopes trained on the sea for whales. Currents limit sea swimming on some days, so the pools and spa do much of the work. Whale season runs from about December to April.

Costa Rica: volcanoes, cloud and rainforest

Costa Rica rewards a trip of two or three stops, combining a volcano, a stretch of forest and a beach. Nayara Springs, outside La Fortuna, is an adults-only group of villas, each with its own plunge pool of warm mineral water from the volcanic springs, and the near-perfect cone of Arenal rising behind when the cloud allows.

For wildlife, Lapa Rios Lodge occupies a ridge-top on the Osa Peninsula inside a thousand-acre private reserve of rainforest, bought by its founders to keep the loggers out. Its sixteen thatched bungalows look over the canopy to the Golfo Dulce, and guides lead guests in search of scarlet macaws and four species of monkey, with Corcovado National Park next door. Getting there usually means a light aircraft to Puerto Jiménez and then a rough drive.

For the beach, Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo occupies the neck of a peninsula in Guanacaste, with a sheltered bay to one side and open Pacific surf to the other. Liberia airport, around forty-five minutes away, has direct flights from North America, making this the simplest luxury arrival in the country.

Photographs: Wikimedia Commons contributors — select to enlarge for full credits.

Belize: forest and reef

Belize pairs naturally with the Yucatán and works best in two halves. Blancaneaux Lodge, once Francis Ford Coppola's private retreat, stands on the banks of Privassion Creek in the pine and waterfall country of Mountain Pine Ridge. It generates its own hydroelectric power, and the Maya city of Caracol and the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave are within reach, on roads slower than the map suggests. Its sister property, Turtle Inn, looks out over the Caribbean from the Placencia peninsula, with thatched cottages, its own dive shop, and the barrier reef and Silk Cayes offshore. Gladden Spit's whale sharks appear most reliably around the full moons of roughly April to June.

Wet and dry seasons

Across most of the region the dry season runs from about December to April, and that is when rates peak. The wet season follows from roughly May or June to November, and it is often gentler than the name suggests: many days start clear, with heavy rain later on. The Atlantic hurricane season, from June to November, affects the Yucatán and Belize, with September and October carrying the greatest risk and the lowest prices; September is when Hotel Esencia is at its emptiest and least expensive.

Costa Rica adds nuance. On the Pacific side, September and October are the wettest months, and the Osa, the wettest region of all, sees some lodges reduce operations. The Caribbean coast follows a different pattern and is often drier than the Pacific in early autumn. Guanacaste is the driest part of the country, and its green season from May to November is far quieter.

Two further notes. Sargassum seaweed can affect Caribbean beaches in late spring and summer. And Mexico's highlands and Baja follow their own rules: San Miguel's rain arrives in short summer bursts, while Los Cabos lies beyond the reach of most Atlantic hurricanes, though Pacific storms can reach it in September.

Indicative rates in the directory run from around US$420 a night at Blancaneaux Lodge to around US$1,300 at Las Ventanas.