Esh Hotel & Spa – Why Does This Journey Begin with Fire?
We arrive in Nosara and are handed a cool towel, a charcoal lemonade and a small piece of paper. On the latter, we write down something we hope to get from this journey. Then we walk over to the fire pit in the lobby – and burn it. No, that’s not how we usually check in either. But at Esh Hotel & Spa, it quickly becomes clear that it’s worth looking at things a little differently.
Coming Home After Six Years
Jaime Bravo grew up in Costa Rica before the world of hospitality took him far from home. He worked at the Ritz-Carlton in Hong Kong and later at boutique hotels in Tulum, spending six years abroad before deciding it was time to return to Costa Rica. Not simply to open another hotel. He wanted to create his first one of his own. Together with his wife Miri, who is from Mexico City, he began working on what would eventually become Esh. In collaboration with Costa Rican architecture studio FAMM Arquitectura and Mexico City-based Sulkin Askenazi, they envisioned a place where architecture would not separate people from what was happening outside.
“Esh” means fire in Hebrew. Here, it stands for change – and slowly we begin to understand why our journey started with a burning piece of paper. There was, however, one small problem. The site didn’t have a sweeping panoramic view. For a hotel in Costa Rica, where endless views of the Pacific almost automatically come to mind, that might not sound like much of an advantage. At Esh, it became exactly that.
When There’s No View, Create a World of Your Own
Rather than trying to direct attention outward, the architects turned the hotel inward. The existing trees stayed. So did the natural stream. Buildings, courtyards, pools of water and shaded passageways were then created around them.
Moving from one part of the hotel to another therefore doesn’t simply mean walking down a corridor. Sometimes there’s a tree in the way, sometimes water appears, then jungle, light or shadow. Plants grow alongside raw concrete, while between the clean lines there is something that could never be completely planned: nature. Perhaps that is why two worlds that initially seem so different work so well together here: the raw architecture of Brutalism and the Japanese idea of wabi-sabi, which doesn’t necessarily try to hide traces of time, imperfection or the natural. In the end, Esh didn’t get one grand view. Instead, it got countless smaller ones.
In Nosara, We Don’t Stay Still for Long
Eventually, of course, we leave the hotel too. Nosara lies on the Nicoya Peninsula and is one of Costa Rica’s best-known surfing destinations. The long stretch of Playa Guiones and its year-round waves attract beginners and experienced surfers alike. But there is another reason why the Nicoya Peninsula keeps appearing in conversations.
The region is counted among the world’s so-called Blue Zones – areas known for an unusually high number of people living to an advanced age. The explanation isn’t sought in one secret ingredient, but rather in a way of life: natural movement, strong family and social connections, a simple diet and the idea of plan de vida – a reason to get up in the morning. There’s certainly no shortage of ways to move in Nosara. We can surf, ride horses, kayak, hop on a mountain bike or practise yoga. And Esh even has Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on its programme. Apparently, there is more than one interpretation of what unwinding in Costa Rica can look like.
What We Burn – and What We Plant
And perhaps that is why it feels fitting that the story of Esh doesn’t end with that small piece of paper in the lobby. The hotel works with Costas Verdes, an organisation dedicated to reforesting Costa Rica’s coastal regions. Guests can take part too: through a private tree-planting experience, they can plant a tree themselves. A rather beautiful way to frame a journey. When we arrive, we write something on a piece of paper and throw it into the fire.
In between, we discover that a hotel doesn’t need a view of the Pacific to give us plenty to look at. We learn a new idea about life. Perhaps we manage to stand up on a surfboard. Perhaps we fall off again five seconds later. And if we’re feeling particularly adventurous, someone might even take us to the ground during Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Then, before we head home, we plant something.
One becomes ash. The other, if all goes well, will one day become a tree.
