Ever been woken by a howler monkey’s mating roar? The louder the long-tailed swingers are, the lesser their other endowments, apparently. At Kura’s adults-only perch on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, step from bed to open-air lounge and you’ll spy these polygynous primates bouncing through the rainforest canopy. It’s like CGI. This six-suite Cayuga Collection hotel in this green energy-powered nation promises high-drama panoramas with every blue sky, hazy ocean horizon cliché. No surprise then, that at breakfast my view included a bikini- clad beauty posing for her lover in the saltwater infinity pool. I can confidently call the Instagram husband in his budgie smugglers her lover. There are only six stilted bungalows here in the jungle, and they were my neighbours. It later dawned on me that the source of my sunrise wake-up call might not have been the monkeys.
Why am I telling you this? Because — key change! — things are heating up. September and October walloped the world with the warmest temperatures on record. Heatwaves across Europe this summer triggered wildfires one day, while torrential floods threatened life elsewhere the next. It’s impossible to ignore the climate chaos. It’s a sign we urgently need to adapt our travels. So, today we’re launching the New Standard for Sustainable Travel. We’re spreading the love for holidays and hotels with a passion for saving the planet. That means hotels like the Cayuga Collection property in Uvita, where energy, waste and water are all monitored and measured, as part of an enormous number of innovations designed to help it tick more responsibly.
