­You won’t find many straight lines at Finca Rosa Blanca Coffee Plantation & Inn.  Perhaps inspired by the meandering vines that lace their way through the Costa Rican jungle and the gently curving rows of coffee plants that surround the inn, almost everything at this eco-pioneer of a hotel is rounded, soft, natural and brilliantly white-washed.  

­­I’m barely over the shock of seeing not one but two white Rolls Royces parked in front of Live Aqua Resort & Spa  in Cancun when an employee, dressed in oddly medical-looking uniform consisting of white capris and a white tunic, guides me into a plush chair in the resort’s enormous lobby and begins giving me a hand massage. A hand massage.

Can this be Cancun? Yes, but a fresh Live Aqua take on Cancun where, despite its size (371 rooms and suites all with ocean view and private balcony), nurturing, personalized touches more commonly associated with a boutique hotel abound.  

­­­Add swanky, sexy new cabañas to the list of reasons to visit Playa Costa del Sol, one of the nicest beaches in El Salvador. Opened in August, Tortuga Village Resort offers an atmosphere that’s a remarkable combination of beach-club-style service and boutique beach hotel design.

­­“If you don’t like espresso find another hotel,” says Roberto Sargogo, co-owner and chef of Casa ILB and Ristorante Il Bongustaio. But we are not in Italy. We are in San Salvador the capital of El Salvador where Roberto, an Italian transplant, and his partner Cristina Penalva, have created an unexpected but oh-so-welcome haven of Italian design, style and flavors at a price you won’t believe.

It’s been called one of the best boutique hotels in El Salvador and from the beginning Los Almendros de San Lorenzo was unexpected. 

Opened in 2005, after a 17 month renovation of a 200-year-old house, the hotel is the creation of a French fashion executive (Pascal Libaily) and a former El Salvadorian ambassador (Joaquín Rodezno).

The hotel melds traditional Central American design and décor with French antiques and modern art collected and displayed with the couple’s elegant, easy style.  

Even the location—in Suchitoto, a breathtakingly beautiful colonial town 25 miles outside the capital of San Salvador—is unexpected.

­­The two coolest boutique hotels in Playa del Carmen are located within a few blocks of each other. Starting in May they share one more important quality: big beachy bargains.

It’s hard to tell which of these sister hotels is hipper.  

At Deseo [Hotel + Lounge] words like “crisp” and “white” spring to mind. While some of the 15 rooms are on the small side, the suites are certifiably huge loft-like spaces with patios and enough square footage between the king size bed and the enormous bathroom to put in an indoor hammock and a bathtub and still have room to dance around naked if you want to. Sexy.

­­Don’t let the pepto-pink exterior of Rosas y Xocolate fool you. This 17 room boutique hotel in one or Mexico’s most vibrant cities is about more than just a flash of color (though pink and chocolate brown dominate, as the name implies). The hotel’s creator, Carlos Kolozs Fisher, is a hard-driving New Yorker who was in the textile business based in the Southern Mexican city of Merida. When he sold his business he “meditated on what to do next.”

While waiting for an answer, he came across a mansion on Merida’s Paseo de Montejo which is lined with massive homes built in the French style by rich sisal growers during the reign of Porfirio Diaz, Mexico’s Europhile President/dictator from 1876 to 1911.

The  owners of the uber-romantic Hacienda Xcanatun, six miles from the heart and charms of the colonial city of Merida in Mexico’s Yucatan, agree that romance should happen all year long, not just on one designated day—and they’re willing to help.

­­Surprise! Like a pinup girl bounding out of a birthday cake Hotel Boca Chica, part of Grupo Habita, livens up the Acapulco scene with a smile and a shimmy and more than a few tricks up her sleeve.

First opened in the 1950s, the original Hotel Boca Chica became an icon of its time before declining, then finally closing in 1997. Another legend from the fifties, Mexican architect Antonio Peleaz, was contracted to bring the shell back to life.

­Tuna is a complicated word in Mexico. On the one hand, tuna is the Spanish word for a delicious cactus fruit. On the other hand, Tuna is also the name of the newest restaurant from Chef Richard Sandoval  where the food is all about fish (and fusion), not fruit. ­

Opened in September in the Polanco neighborhood (the Beverly Hills/5th Avenue of Mexico City), the concept behind Tuna is to bring together elements of Asian cooking with elements of Mexican cooking. A particularly successful example of this unlikely culinary combination is the restaurant’s Chinese tacos al pastor. This dish takes the traditional Mexican ingredients for this ubiquitous type of taco (pork, pineapple, pickled onion, cilantro and pickled chilies) and ditches the tortilla in favor of a “shell” that has the color, taste and consistency of an Asian steamed pork bun (90 pesos or about US$7).