A one-bedroom in Playa Herradura for a week of golf at La Iguana

If you're coming to Playa Herradura to play La Iguana, the Ted Robinson Jr. course laid out through rainforest at Los Sueños, and you want a one-bedroom rather than a condo built for six, we have four of them, all on the same shared property a few minutes from the course entrance off the coast road. Two are freestanding cabinas with their own kitchens. Two are private rooms inside the main house. Which one you want depends almost entirely on whether you plan to cook.

That is the real decision, and most listing sites bury it under photographs of pools.

The four one-bedroom options, side by side

All four sit at Zenergy Casa & Cabinas in Playa Herradura: three guest cabinas and a three-bedroom main house arranged around a large pool and planted grounds. Everything below sleeps two unless noted.

• Cabina Bamboo, a studio cabina with its own full kitchen, air conditioning, a patio and a balcony, a washer and dryer, free parking, and a desk. Sleeps two.
• Cabina Hibiscus, the same idea with a different personality: self-contained, full kitchen, air conditioning, balcony, patio, desk, washer and dryer, and a shelf of books. Sleeps two.
• Cabina Plumeria, a one-bedroom cabina with a queen bed plus a day-bed, so it sleeps three rather than two. Desk, patio, balcony, garden.
• Sunflower Suite, a room in the main house with a king bed and a private ensuite bath hung with custom Costa Rican art. Desk, patio, garden, free parking.

There is also the Zen Den, a one-bedroom room in the main house with a full bed, a writing desk and a reading nook. Its bathroom is shared with the Rose Room next door, and the kitchen it uses is the shared house kitchen. For two people on a golf trip who want a door that closes on everything, that's a real constraint, which is why we'd point most couples at a cabina first.

Why the cabinas suit a golf week

A tee time means an early start, and an early start means you want coffee without negotiating a hotel breakfast service. Cabina Bamboo is a 240-square-foot studio with a stove, oven, fridge, microwave, toaster, coffee maker, dishes and a spice rack already in the cupboard. You can be up, fed and in the car before anyone else on the property has moved.

The other half of that equation is what happens at the end of the round. There's a barbecue area and a pool on the shared grounds, and the cabinas have a washer and dryer, which matters more than it sounds in this climate: a golf shirt soaked through by the tenth hole can be clean and dry by dinner, and you can pack half as much for a week.

Bamboo or Hibiscus, if you're deciding between the two

They're close siblings. Both are one-bedroom, both sleep two, both have air conditioning, a kitchen, a patio, a balcony, laundry and a desk, and both look out at the mountains behind the coast. Bamboo is the larger of the two at 240 square feet against Hibiscus at 192, and it keeps board games for a rained-out afternoon in green season. Hibiscus is listed as a cabina rather than a cabin and has books instead of games, children's dinnerware, and a crib available.

Guests have been emphatic about both. Bamboo has over 120 reviews and sits a shade under a perfect ten; Hibiscus has more than forty and is nearly as high. If someone asked us to choose blind, we'd give a golfer Bamboo for the extra floor space to leave a bag open, and give a reader who wants a quiet corner and an early night Hibiscus.

If you want the king bed

Pick the Sunflower Suite. It's the only one-bedroom here with a king, and it has its own ensuite bathroom, so you get hotel-room privacy inside the main house with a desk, a patio and the garden outside the door. The trade is the kitchen: the house kitchen is shared, so a Sunflower stay means cooking alongside other guests rather than in your own four walls. Plenty of people prefer it that way, and the onsite team is right there.

And if your partner isn't playing and wants somewhere to stretch out while you're on the course, Cabina Plumeria has a day-bed alongside the queen, which turns a one-bedroom into a place with a second spot to read.

Working between rounds

Every one of these one-bedrooms has wifi and a dedicated workspace, which is unusual for cabinas this size and the reason a steady stream of remote workers book them for weeks rather than nights. Play in the morning when it's cool, work through the afternoon at the desk with the air conditioning on, swim before dinner. The Zen Den and the Rose Room were both built around a well-lit desk and a reading nook, and the Rose Room has room-darkening shades, a detail that only matters until the first morning you try to sleep past five in the tropics.

Where this puts you

La Iguana sits inside the Los Sueños resort just west of the Herradura entrance, an 18-hole par 72 running through rainforest, and these cabinas are a few minutes from it on the same stretch of coast. Jacó town is ten to fifteen minutes down the road, which is where you go for a long dinner, a crowd and a late night. Herradura is where you go to sleep afterwards. The difference between the two is the whole reason to stay on this side of the hill.

The drive in from Juan Santamaría is about an hour and a quarter on Route 27 in clear conditions, and can stretch considerably on a Friday afternoon or a holiday weekend. Rent the car. You'll want it for the course and for the run down to Jacó, and there's free parking at every one of these stays.

Bicycles are available on the property too, which is a better way to get around Herradura than it sounds, and the guest from the last few weeks who used one to get to the beach every morning did not touch their car once except to drive to golf.

Booking it

These are personally hosted and managed, with an onsite team you can reach by app, text, email or phone, and they book direct through us rather than through a platform. Dates, minimum stays and rates for your week are worth a quick message before you commit to flights, especially if you're coming in high season, since the one-bedrooms here go first and there are only a handful of them.

Tell us which days you're playing and how many of you are actually holding clubs. That's usually enough for us to say which of the four you want.