It wasn't until morning, when we were sipping glasses of starfruit juice and watching day break over the Pacific Ocean in the distance, that the spell finally broke. Until then, frankly, we'd felt a lot like the Scooby Doo gang must whenever they get lost in the remote mountains of Transylvania and end up spending the night in a spooky castle staffed by a small complement of the undead.

In fact, we were in the mountains of Costa Rica, about 70 kilometres north of San Jose. The web booking we had made for our last two nights in the country said the Inn at Coyote Mountain was in the hills outside the town of San Ramon. That turned out to mean a 50-minute ride in a four-wheel-drive cab along some of the steepest, most winding and rock-strewn roads I've ever encountered. It was dark and misty -- the area is in a "cloud forest" -- and we quickly left all signs of civilization behind.

Our castle, when we finally arrived, was perched on a promontory in a small clearing in the forest. A luxurious villa built around a courtyard with a fountain, it has just four guest rooms. With 20-foot-high, half-timbered ceilings, four-poster beds and enormous mosaic-tiled bathrooms, it felt hundreds of years old. And we were the only guests.

The Inn at Coyote Mountain is actually best known for its food. It's the sister property of the Trout Point Lodge in Nova Scotia, and both places regularly offer three-day cooking classes taught by the three owner-chefs, Daniel Abel, Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret, who specialize in Cajun and Creole cuisine. The magnificent building, despite its medieval Castilian feel, was completed only in 2004, and the lodge's sustainability policy includes wind-generated electricity, its own organic fruit and vegetable plantings, and staff hired entirely from within a two-kilometre radius.

In other words, it's a luxury retreat -- but one whose seclusion and small-yet-grandiose scale made it unlike anywhere I've stayed before, even once the sun rose and the mists cleared.

The dinner choices were very simple: "When would you like to eat?" our host asked us. "How about 7:30?" we suggested. "It will be served in the dining hall," he said. And that was that.

In the stately dining hall -- where, had there been other guests, we would have shared the long table -- we were served a four-course meal: a velvety eggplant soup with an undertone of smoked pepper, a salad, then a main course of marlin with a citrus, honey and tarragon glaze accompanied by sauteed cauliflower and carrots. Dessert was banana-chocolate bread baked in individual custard pots.

It was exceptional.

The cost -- though such vulgarities were not mentioned at the time -- was $35 (all figures U.S.) per person, and well worth it. The three-course breakfast the next morning was a less-palatable $20 each, worthwhile mainly for the indescribable lightness of the starfruit juice.

It's possible to make daytrips from the inn to major tourist destinations like the Monteverde Cloud Forest and, farther afield, the famous Arenal volcano. But after 10 days of travel, we were eager for a break from the ravening tourist hordes, so we decided to make our day's entertainment the quest for a less expensive lunch than the inn would have offered. Armed with a complete ignorance of the area's geography, we headed for the surrounding valleys.