La Tigra Rainforest Lodge

Location: Situated in a rainforest, offering immersive natural experiences . Some rooms feature open-sided designs with direct forest views.

This was the first stop on our trip and everything I had been dreaming about. The epitome of outstanding ecotourism. Amazing treehouses set in the forest, super friendly team, great night walk, really lovely food and awesome trails throughout the property and neighbouring Bosque La Tigra. Such an impressive rainforest restoration project. I was initially concerned about the distance from our excursions around Fortuna but the drive was easy and it’s nice to come back to the serenity of La Tigra each day. A trip highlight!

What you expect might not necessarily be what you get. This Ecolodge is tourist-factory with the Charme of a train station. 1. Staff Staff was friendly though not very personal or interested. They were not even interested in our names and we had the feeling we were just numbers (room numbers) , very different to other Eco lodges we visited, (for example Lirio Lodge), which was probably the case as LaTigra is more like a tourist-factory. They push through large travel groups on a two-nights stay basis. There was no manager present, staff changed on a daily basis, no-one talked with you or explained anything beside taking your orders. 2. Location First , this is a 50 minute drive from La Fortuna and about half of it is a really rough dirt road, only drivable with 4x4. As most activities take place around LaFortuna this is an almost 2 hour waste of time every day. Second, if you drive up a mountain, what would you expect? I think the only reason to drive up a mountain is to get a gorgeous view. The pictures of the bungalows they advertise with suggests that, however, if you are not in a large travel group you are prioritised away to the so called “new” bungalows which lie around 400m off to the other side and are almost dug into the jungle ground. 3. Description of “new” bungalows: Very dark, absolutely no view, no Charme. Just plain dark wood bungalows with lots of spiders and creepy stuff inside, which is no surprise as our bungalow was literally dug into the forest ground. The lighting consisted of two naked light bulbs which hung from the roof and even during daytime you had to use a flashlight if you were looking for something in your bag. Reading was impossible. No Moscito nets, no fan, and no internet in the bungalows !!! Internet only available at the Restaurant. The bathroom smelled very unpleasantly even though the bungalow was new and we were not tempted to take a shower in there. 4. Restaurant The food was okay, though not very tasty. The only upside was, that the food was comparably reasonably priced. My daughter said this was the worst ever accomodation we had had in years of travelling.