One of the world’s most unusual hotels, the Hotel Quinta Real Zacatecas encircles the 17th century San Pedro bullring. Blending the luxury of a modern, all-suite hotel with the splendour of original, colonial architecture, the hotel faces the city’s ancient arched viaduct. To dine in the restaurant, with the golden light blazing from the many archways and a million stars sparkling in the blackest sky, promotes a magical feeling of anticipation as though some grand spectacle is about to take place.

Situated on the edge of the Manuel Antonio National Park, the Costa Verde Resort features an incredible hotel suite set inside a 1965 Boeing 727 airplane. In its former life the airplane transported globetrotters on South Africa Air and Avianca Airlines, and it now serves as a two bedroom suite perched on the edge of the rainforest overlooking the beach and ocean.

The airplane was transported piece by piece from San Jose airport to its current resting place on a pedestal 50 feet above the beach. It looks a bit like a model airplane on a stand, and we can only imagine the spectacular views from the balcony and the airplane windows. Five big trucks were needed to get the plane out to the resort, and while the transportation certainly had a negative ecological impact, the finished project is a stunning example of adaptive reuse.

The two-bedroom, two-bathroom suite also includes a kitchenette, flat-screen TV, a dining room, and a terrace with an ocean view. We can’t really agree with their choice of furnishings, which are made from teak and shipped across the Pacific from Indonesia, but at least they were hand carved. The tip-to-tail panelling on the inside is also teak, but it was harvested locally in Costa Rica. Like the Jumbo Jet Hostel in Stockholm, this hotel suite is sure to offer jet-setting travellers a lovely location for an extended layover.

The Salt Hotel of Salar de Uyuni is sort of similar to the ice hotels in Norway and Sweden, only it’s never in any danger of melting. The hotel is built completely of blocks of salt cut out of the lake; similar to how Eskimo’s cut snow to make their igloos. The sun heats the massive blocks of salt so that while the surrounding temperatures drop massively during the night, the interior remains warm and cosy.

The hotel has 15 bedrooms, a dining room, a living room and a bar. Almost everything is made up of salt; you sit on the salt chairs, eat on salt tables, sleep on salt beds and enjoy your drinks in the salt bar. In the dining room of the hotel the salt is always on the table or rather it would apt to say the salt is the table. The toilets, lighting and pool table are the only things made of contemporary materials.

There is only one rule guests must adhere to when staying at the hotel: no licking the walls!