Looking for recs for family vacation

Hi friends !

we are a familly of 4 looking for a place for a trip in central/south America from december 31st to January 10th.

We have sons of 8 and 19 so we would like to find some place to please both of them. I was thinking about Guatemala or Colombia perhaps. We would like to rent a car and visit the country mostly by ourselves considering areas to avoid etc. We did that last year on the Yucatan Peninsula and we all
had such a blast !

We like to eat good food in restaurants and also cook at our place, hiking, snorkeling, water sports etc.

Any of you has cool destinations to share where you spent family vacation and did rent a car ?

i could also do with organized tours and UBER but it's clearly not what we prefer.

thank you !