Costa Rica Real Estate Project’s Beach Club Location Named One of the World’s Best Eco-Friendly Beaches

Despite the huge number of people around the world who head to the beach each summer to escape the cities in which they live, not every sandy landscape they visit is beautiful and pristine. In fact, irrespective of the number of beachgoers, many shorelines on the planet are littered with garbage and suffer from polluted waters. Sad but true.

However, there are some beaches that are so magnificent, they not only offer true refuge for travelers, but provide a sanctuary for wildlife as well. Recently CNN Travel and the Mother Nature Network identified the most spectacular, eco-friendly shorelines after searching the planet and, to no surprise, most of their top choices were on protected land or nearly impossible to reach.

One of those beaches, Playa Matapalo, Costa Rica, happens to be the location of where Hacienda Matapalo’s beach club will be located.

“I fell in love with Playa Matapalo the minute I saw it,” said Hacienda Matapalo’s Executive Vice President Brian Albury. “When we chose our location, we knew how special it was. Now the rest of the world knows too.”

Playa Matapalo was named as the number two eco-friendly beach in the world, behind only Whitehaven Beach in Whitsunday Islands, Australia. Some of the beaches it ranked in front of include: Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, Oahu, Hawaii; Koh Libong, Trang Province, Thailand; Las Islas Cies, Galicia, Spain; and Sancho Bay, Fernando de Noronha, Brazil.

Although their cartography was a little off, as the article referenced the Osa Peninsula which is actually about an hour and a half south of Playa Matapalo Beach by car, it did collectively describe the two areas beautifully.

“Known as the lungs of the Earth,” the article stated, “the Osa Peninsula is blessed with a dense forest and a conservation-minded government. Half of the 500,000 species of flora and fauna located in Costa Rica can be found here. The area is also home to beautiful Playa Matapalo, a gray-sand beach popular with surfers that leads into the Portalon National Wildlife Refuge complete with a marine turtle protection project.”

“We knew that Playa Matapalo was one of the best beaches on the planet,” Albury said. “It has been a recipient of the prestigious Blue Flag more than once.”

Modeled after the Blue Flag program developed in Europe to identify the world's best beaches based upon ecological quality and visitor conveniences, Costa Rica has created its own Blue Flag program with strict objective rating standards involving water and beach qualities of cleanliness. Only those beaches obtaining a water and beach quality score of 90 or more (out of 100) are certified as Blue Flag.

The Blue Flag designation is a badge of honor and distinction.

The program's overall goal is environmental excellence, not just getting by. The environmental excellence bar is intentionally set high through the establishment of objective criteria. It involves the communities, from businesses to schools to local governments. There is an economic incentive to attain Blue Flag status, community pride at stake and an increasing awareness of how sensitive the oceans are.

“That was one of the reasons we specifically chose Playa Matapalo as the location for Hacienda Matapalo’s beach club,” Albury beamed. “It really doesn’t get any better than this.”

To learn more about Playa Matapalo and the Hacienda Matapalo Beach Club, visit HaciendaMatapalo.com.

Costa Rica Real Estate Project Recognized as a Top Ten Best Home Deal

Hacienda Matapalo, the best selling property in Costa Rica with more than $60 million in pre-construction sales, recently had another accolade added to its growing number of compliments: it was selected by the popular Web site Top Ten Real Estate Deals as one of the best real estate deals on the market.

Ranked seventh, Hacienda Matapalo was selected as the only non-U.S.-based property for the week of June 21, 2010 and was only the second property chosen from Costa Rica since the site launched in 2009.

"This is a big honor for us," said David Matluck, chief executive officer of Pegasus Star Limitada, the developer of Hacienda Matapalo. "It illustrates that the industry is recognizing what we have believed all along – that we are offering consumers a quality, environmentally-responsible development, at an affordable price. This selection is an affirmation of the fact that all of our efforts have gone into delivering the best possible investment value for our future homeowners."

The Top Ten Real Estate Deals Web site has been featured on a number of media outlets including CNBC, Yahoo!, Aol Home and a variety of local news outlets including such markets as San Francisco and Denver.

Each week the editors select The Top Ten Real Estate Deals by researching thousands of properties both in the United States and internationally and weighing various criteria in order to identify and showcase the very best deals available.

To learn more about Hacienda Matapalo, visit their Web site at haciendamatapalo.com.

In other news, Hacienda Matapalo recently announced it will be adding a new holistic wellness center to its development and it will be located within the confines of its gated community.

Because Costa Rica has become a primary destination for the world's growing medical tourism industry and considering out-of-pocket expenses for health care in Costa Rica are as much as 50% less than what they are in the U.S., the option for both traditional and holistic care in Costa Rica is not only viable but desirable.

On Thursday, July 15 from 6 to 7 p.m. Eastern Time, Hacienda Matapalo's Executive Vice President Brian Albury will be joined by renowned holistic medical expert Dr. Rashmi Gulati, the medical director of New York City's Patients Medical, as she will be talking about the benefits of holistic medicine including wellness programs, anti-aging and hormonal therapy that can add years to one's life.

Interested parties can register here.