Explore Costa Rica
So much to Have fun
Who We Are
They call us Ticos (or Ticas). We are resilient, we have no permanent national army, we grow great bananas, we have 500,000 animal species, we speak Spanish (officially), and we love growing amazing coffee! We are Costa Ricans.
No matter your pace, adventure is waiting. Hidden secrets are everywhere
Now all you need is an amazing place to stay.
A place fit for adventurers.
- Free breakfast
- Free guided night hikes (discover nocturnal wildlife)
- Choose from 7 private treehouses
- 80 acres of wildlife refuge surround property
- Trails on grounds lead through the jungle to a river
- We can arrange your transportation
- We can arrange your excursions and tours with no additional fee
- Early arrival is allowed! We’ll secure your luggage while we prepare your room and you enjoy your day.
- Exclusive activities for our guests
- Activities for all ages and skill levels
- Located near many things to do
- Closer of most off the beaten path spots
Some of the best things to do are not advertised, no ticket booth, and no tour bus idling in the parking lot. We've been sending our guests to these places off the beaten path for years! We would rather tell you about them, than let you stumble across them alone.
ATV Mountain Tour
Rivers, Mountains, and a Glass of Something Cold at the End
Most ATV tours follow the same circuit you rev the engine, take a photo, and that's more or less it.
Here is different. The route climbs into the mountains, through stunning views. If the weather permits it, the route includes a visit to an VOLCANIC POOL, where you can swim in natural volcanic rock pools that most people have never heard of.
Seeking a different stop?
The tour ends at Stone Handcraft ranch, where sugarcane juice comes straight from the press, snacks are waiting, hike into the frog farm and the pace drops entirely. The homemade lunch waiting at the end doesn't hurt either.
It's two to three hours. It feels longer, in the best way.
We almost forgot, if you're into sport fishing or simply want a fresh catch for lunch, grab a pole and spend some extra time on the property.
Pool & Zipline
Three Lines. A Pool at the End. $35.
We'll be straightforward with you: most ziplines in the Arenal area cost $75 or more per person. Here they charge $35.
The lines are shorter than the big commercial operations, three cables through the forest, but the experience is solid, the staff are genuinely welcoming, and when you're done, you can use their pool for as long as you like.
Who doesn't enjoy a pool?
That last part matters more than it sounds. Tree Houses Hotel doesn't have a pool.
On a hot afternoon after a busy morning , being able to drop into cool water ten minutes from your treehouse isn't a minor thing.
Ten minutes from the hotel. We'll point you in the right direction.
Cloud Forest Hiking
The Cloud Forest Without the Crowds
Monteverde gets the headlines. here gets the quiet.
This private cloud forest reserve sits about 45 minutes from Tree Houses, high enough that the air turns cool and the trees disappear into mist by mid-morning. The trails are easy to follow and rarely busy, the kind of place where solitude feels less like an absence and more like the whole idea.
We send guests here who want the real cloud forest experience without spending half the day driving to Monteverde and the other half navigating its crowds. It tends to be the kind of place people mention when they get home, and someone asks what surprises them most.
Volcanic Pool
Volcanic Rock Pools. No Entrance Fee Barely Anyone Knows About Them
About 25 minutes from the hotel, this gem is exactly what it sounds like: natural pools carved into dark volcanic basalt rock, fed by a cold river, surrounded by forest. You can swim. You can sit on the rocks and do nothing in particular. There is no ticket booth, no tour company, no scheduled departure time.
This is the kind of place locals go on a Sunday. It's also the kind of place that almost never appears on a Costa Rica itinerary, which is precisely why we mention it.
Kayaking in a volcanic crater
A Volcanic Crater Lake. Costa Rica's Deepest. Almost No One There
It is a lake inside a volcano crater 75 meters deep, with water that shifts between deep green and blue depending on the light and the minerals below the surface. It is, by some distance, the most unusual body of water in the country that isn't inside a national park.
You kayak on it. Or paddleboard. Or swim off the dock. Or just sit and stare at the walls of dense jungle rising around the edge of the crater and try to remember the last time you were somewhere this quiet.
It's an hour and twenty minutes from Tree Houses, which makes it a full day commitment. We think it's worth it. We'd also suggest combining it with a stop at Laguna del Hule on the same route, another volcanic lake, almost as dramatic, almost as empty.
The Forest That Schoolchildren Built
In 1987, a class of Swedish schoolchildren heard that Costa Rican rainforest was being destroyed and started raising money to protect it. That effort spread to 44 countries. The result is a 22,600-hectare private reserve that stretches from the mountains near Monteverde all the way toward Arenal the largest private reserve in the country, and one of the most biodiverse places of its size on the planet.
The station closest to Tree Houses is Pocosol, about 35 minutes away. It's the least visited of the four access points, which means you're hiking through primary cloud and rainforest with serious biodiversity quetzals, howler monkeys, tapirs, without the footfall that the Monteverde side attracts.
There's a real story here, and the trails reward the people who make the detour to find them.
Stone Handcraft
Stone Handcraft doesn't fit neatly into a category, which is part of why we like recommending it. The shop itself sells locally made crafts and gifts that are a genuine step above the usual tourist fare.
The frog farm next to it is small, unhurried, run by people who clearly enjoy showing it to visitors, is the kind of thing that children remember for the rest of the trip and adults pretend they're there for the kids.
It's a natural stop
if you're doing the ATV Mountain tour, since the route ends here. It also works as a standalone 20-minute drive from the hotel for a quieter afternoon, or as a quick add-on after the volcanic pool.
Chocolate Workshop
This isn't a chocolate tasting. It's a workshop that starts in the dirt and ends with a chocolate bar you made yourself.
You'll begin with a short walk through an organic farm, getting properly introduced to the cacao trees themselves — along with the exotic fruit trees and plant life growing alongside them. From there, the workshop moves into the history: the cultural and social weight cacao has carried for centuries, long before it became the candy bar in a checkout aisle.
Then the hands-on part begins. Using the same ancient Mayan tools and recipes still passed down today, you'll grind cacao by hand and turn it into two traditional cacao drinks — nothing like the hot chocolate you grew up with. The workshop closes with you molding your own chocolate bars to take home, made entirely by you, start to finish.
The Cup of Coffee You'll Actually Remember
Costa Rican coffee has a reputation. This is where you find out why it's deserved.
Over two and a half hours, a passionate local expert walks you through the entire process — not as a lecture, but as something you do yourself. You'll handpick ripe coffee cherries and learn to select the finest ones, the same way pickers here have for generations. Then comes the part most visitors never see: pulping, fermenting, and drying the beans using traditional methods passed down through the farm's history.
The experience builds toward a guided cupping session, where you'll actually taste the difference between processing methods and roast levels — the kind of detail that turns "I like coffee" into "I understand coffee." It ends, fittingly, with a freshly brewed cup of the farm's own exceptional coffee.
One more thing worth knowing: the farm is also home to geese, ducks, chickens, peacocks, and the occasional wild visitor wandering through — so if you're traveling with kids, this tends to be a hit well beyond the coffee itself.