Macaw Lodge

In the 1980s a family bought a worn-out farm in Las Delicias de Turrubares and began putting the forest back, tree by tree. What had been cleared for crops became, over decades, a private forest reserve bordering Carara National Park. Macaw Lodge opened on that reclaimed ground in 2011, built largely from plantation timber cut and milled on the property, with bamboo and wood shaped into countertops, walls and furniture by local builders. Some of the timber came from trees pulled from the Tarcoles River after a tropical storm in 2010. The lodge runs off the grid, drawing power partly from solar panels and its water from natural springs, treated without chemicals. Eight standard rooms sit on the second floor of the main building, each with two beds on therapeutic mattresses and a marble bathroom. Three standard bungalows and a set of natural bungalows, framed in bamboo and teak with clay walls, ring the main building; one family bungalow has its own kitchen. Guests can walk the botanical garden's paths among more than a hundred types of palm, or hike out to a waterfall on the grounds. Over 350 bird species pass through the surrounding forest, scarlet macaws among them. It is not a place with restaurants or shops nearby. The kitchen, run by a local chef, covers that ground instead.