From the Founders

We used to come home from vacations needing another vacation. We had done the beautiful beaches, the virgin piña coladas, the massages, all of it, and we would arrive home rested but somehow unchanged. So eventually we stopped looking for a better vacation and, when the time was right, built the one we actually wanted. Maren calls it her perfect vacation. We just live here part of the year and invite people to it.

It starts with the name. Asencia is named for the senses. Maren is a highly sensitive person, the kind who is thrown off by an artificial smell in the air or music that is a little too much, and Rob is not far behind. So we made a place where the senses get the real thing in a clean way: jungle air, warm sea, good food, natural fibers, quiet when it should be quiet. Nothing to tune out. People notice they are just calm, usually before they can say why.

More than 30 years ago we each chose to live on a more spiritual basis, and we found each other in the middle of that. We are still seekers. But our seeking these days looks less like a seminar room and more like this: breathwork and cold plunges with friends, waterfalls, ATVs, shared dinners, and lots of laughter. The human experience was never one or the other. It is all of it together.

Then there is how we got here, which still makes us shake our heads. We came to Punta Uva for three days, that is all the time we had. In those three days we found this land, and on the day we were leaving, we stood in a blessing of it and set an intention: whoever comes here, family, friends, guests we have not met yet, should feel peaceful and happy here, and remember what life is about. The jungle comes right down to the water at Punta Uva. Rob says it is the most beautiful place he has ever seen, and that he would like to swim at that beach for the rest of his life.

We built with the land, not over it. An architect helped us tuck the casitas in among the old trees, facing the sunrise, and we kept every tree we could. And we did not import a team. Everything we needed was already here: the massage therapists, the breathwork facilitators, the yoga teachers, the chef. The most talented people we know live in Puerto Viejo.

Maren spent 25 years in the luxury spa industry, including five star resorts, so the details are looked after. But pampering was never the point. Five star can feel robotic, and we wanted the opposite of a false reality. We call it luxury for the human spirit.

Come as you are. Happy, tired, grieving, curious, we meet you where you are. For this week, this is your home. Come home to being human. Come home to yourself.

Maren and Rob