Costa Ricas Favorite Family Destination

• Casa Tropical

  Casa Tropical

  • Guest kenga (Jackson, WY USA)
  • Date of stay 03/22/09
  • Review Submitted 05/02/09
  Wonderful artist's house,secluded yet 5 minutes walk to bus stop on main road between Quepos and Manuel Antonio. Very helpful caretakers who are available to cook fresh local seafood dinners. Very reasonable taxi service. Very clean and comfortable. Monkeys and iguanas in nearby trees; magnificent flowers and foliage everywhere. Many local restaurants ranging from fancy to cafes. Local Costa Rican people are genuinely friendly, engaging and helpful. Beautiful local beaches, whitewater rafting, horseback riding and zip lining recommended. Lots of fishing and jungle tours available. Short,scenic flight to San Jose. We would highly recommend this property as a great alternative to a traditional hotel or "luxury villa".

  Recommended for: Adventure seekers, girls getaway, families with teenagers, families with young children, romantic getaway, tourists without a car, sightseeing, age 55+.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 6/6

• Great experience and beautiful home

  Great experience and beautiful home

  • Guest Robert (Asheville, NC)
  • Date of stay 08/06/13
  • Review Submitted 08/14/13
  My family had a wonderful visit at this home. The pool was great for cooling off at night. The housekeeper and her son were very helpful and accommodating. She prepared a delicious meal for us. The monkeys came close to us. It was very spacious and secure. We highly recommend this house.

  Recommended for: Families with teenagers.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 0/0

• We Didn't Want To Leave

  We Didn't Want To Leave

  • Guest FandB (Ottawa, Canada)
  • Date of stay 07/29/12
  • Review Submitted 09/04/12
  We truly appreciated the time we spent at Casa Tropical, and we were all really sad to leave. This beautiful home is like an art gallery - we loved the family's paintings throughout the house, which includes ones they did together. The gardens are stunning, and attracted so many butterflies and hummingbirds. We felt relaxed and very much at home-- the owners have created a very peaceful place. Our children had such a great time hanging out in the pool, reading in the hammocks, and checking out all the wildlife, that it took them 6 days to ask if there was a TV in the house! We were greeted by toucans when we arrived, met the iguanas and the tiny boa that live in the roof, spent an entire afternoon with 15 or more titis tearing around all the trees and jumping from the roof, were visited by an enormous green snake (more than 2 m long!), and spotted lots of different frogs, and many other birds. Gorgeous blue and green parrots were there to say good bye the morning we left. Hannia, Claudio and Andres were wonderful. Hannia taught me how to make delicious Costa Rican food. We had a few fun evenings hanging out with Andres drinking Imperial, and getting the details on all the birds and reptiles visiting the house. Andres knows all the guides in town, so course he set us up with the best guides in the area, and tours that suited us perfectly. My husband and I both read Steve's book and we loved it. He is such an entertaining writer! Reading this book early in our stay helped us enjoy and appreciate the area so much, as we recognized businesses, towns and rivers that were part of the family's adventures in CR. It was also very special and unique to learn about the family that built the home we had the privilege of occupying. This was a perfect vacation and we can't wait to come back again!

  Recommended for: Pet owners, adventure seekers, girls getaway, families with teenagers, families with young children, romantic getaway, tourists without a car, sightseeing, age 55+.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 1/1

• All Agree- Best Vacation Ever

  All Agree- Best Vacation Ever

  • Guest Sally (Lansing, Michigan)
  • Date of stay 01/28/12
  • Review Submitted 02/23/12
  Casa Tropical was the perfect place for our family of eight, four adults and four children. The house was great: very comfortable, clean and well maintained. There was a tremendous amount of outdoor living area from where you could enjoy the beautiful landscaping and terrific views. Anna the housekeeper was very helpful and a wonderful cook. She prepared many meals of local cuisine that were delicious. It was a real treat to come back to the house to home cooked meals after a day of sight seeing. We found this to be a much better option than gathering everyone up again and going back out to dinner, or Heaven forbid, cooking! Andres, her son was also a tremendous help. He arranged for tours and activities that were appropriate for our group, and checked in everyday to make sure all was well and give assistance when needed. Casa Tropical Tropical is in a wonderful location because of all the many and varied activities in the vacinity. You can be on the beach one day and zip lining in the jungle the next. We all agreed that this was our best vacation to date and would love to return.

  Recommended for: Adventure seekers, girls getaway, families with teenagers, families with young children, romantic getaway, tourists without a car, sightseeing, age 55+.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 5/5

• Great house, great view.... BUT....

  Great house, great view.... BUT....

  • Guest Sven (Alexandria)
  • Date of stay 12/03/11
  • Review Submitted 12/06/11
  The house is very nice and open, great view and wonderful plants surrounding the house itself. Clean and very well kept however the construction of the next door house is really putting a dent in an otherwise nice vacation... Drilling, hammering you name it starting even before 7 am and not ending at 5 pm for sure.... I wish we would have known about the noise!! Also the washer for the house translates into the services by the care takers....

  Owner response: We have had neighbors building a house down the hill next door to us, which is beyond our control. We have asked them to keep the noise down as much as possible and in the 9 months of construction we have only had a couple of complaints from the more than 20 guests who have rented from us. Construction is due to be completed next month in Jan. of 2012 and we will all be relieved to get back to tranquility.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 6/7

• Into The Heart of Darkness With LED Headlamp

  Into The Heart of Darkness With LED Headlamp

  • Guest taojonez (Bozeman, MT, USA)
  • Date of stay 04/05/11
  • Review Submitted 05/17/11
  We had a great time. Highlights were: coffee on the roof patio watching monkeys, cooling off in the pool, sunsets on the roof with rum drinks, looking for frogs and other critters at night with headlamps, listening to the birds and insects in the early morning, beaches, beaches, beaches....

  Recommended for: Adventure seekers, girls getaway, families with teenagers, families with young children, romantic getaway, sightseeing, age 55+.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 3/3

• Amazing Place!!

  Amazing Place!!

  • Guest jlynn1123 (San Diego, CA)
  • Date of stay 08/16/10
  • Review Submitted 08/23/10
  We just returned from our stay at Casa Tropical (Aug 16-21) and could not have been more pleased! There were 6 adults (3 couples) in our group, approximately 30 yrs old. The grounds are beautiful, the house set up is so bright and airy; I thought it was much more spacious than the pictures showed. The caretakers were a blessing! Andres was really helpful in spotting wildlife for us as well as booking tours and general area info. Andres showed us monkeys the first morning we were there and he also pointed out a sloth, different types of frogs and much more. He has very keen senses! Ania made the best meals we had on our trip, so delicious! We loved the patios, roofdeck, privacy, views, plants, pool, I could go on and on. Everyone in my group kept commenting on how we could have not selected a better rental for our stay and I agree!! We had a rental car so it was easy to get around (def get a 4x4!) but it seemed as though the bus system was fairly accessible, taxis were abundant and Andres arranged for tours to pick us up at the property. I would love to stay here again in the future and definitely recommend to anyone going to the area!

  Recommended for: Adventure seekers, girls getaway, families with teenagers, families with young children, romantic getaway, tourists without a car, sightseeing, age 55+.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 6/6

• Great Home Base for Family Vacation

  Great Home Base for Family Vacation

  • Guest Carrie (Woodland Hills, CA)
  • Date of stay 07/18/10
  • Review Submitted 08/23/10
  Our family has wanted to go to Costa Rica for many years and had a difficult time picking a base area with only 7 nights to spend. We chose Manuel Antonio because of the ease of getting there from the airport as well as it's reputation for beautiful beaches and plentiful wildlife, but were very concerned because it was rainy season. Once we found this great house on-line, Steve assured us the weather would be great - and he was right! The house (and it's caretakers) are everything promised in other posts and we made life-long memories there. Each of us had our favorite - my daughter ziplining, my son white water rafting, my husband the public beach complete with chairs, umbrellas and drink service. My favorite however was undoubtedly sitting on our home's rooftop deck in the evening watching the jungle fade to dark.

  Recommended for: Adventure seekers, girls getaway, families with teenagers, families with young children, tourists without a car, sightseeing, age 55+.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 2/2

• Casa Tropical

  Casa Tropical

  • Guest John, Marta, Joseph and Caroline (Atlanta, GA)
  • Date of stay 03/06/10
  • Review Submitted 04/27/10
  We loved the house! So beautiful and relaxing that we had to tear ourselves away to see the sights in Manuel Antonio and Quepos. There are so many lovely outdoor areas and the inside space is so open and airy that we were content to hang out in hammocks or at the pool. The jungle sounds were a treat as was seeing monkeys and sloths in the yard. Annia and Andres were exceptional hosts. After they learned that most of our luggage went to San Juan, PR instead of San Jose, CR, Andres drove us into town our first night to shop for clothes. His advice on the tours was was totally accurate. By all means, you should let him help you arrange some outings. Annia is a wonderful cook. The best food we had in Quepos was what Annia prepared for us. We tried a few restaurants, but wished we had eaten all our meals at the house. On our last night Annia and Andres took us into Quepos to see the night market. Highly recommended - buy your food fresh and see exotic fruit and vegetables you probably won't recognize. After making our purchases, Annia cooked us another fantastic meal. Our last day Andres drove us to the airport, with stops at "Alligator Bridge" and a wonderful "Tico" restuarant for lunch. Wonderful house and wonderful hosts. Great for a family vacation!

  Recommended for: Families with teenagers, families with young children, tourists without a car, sightseeing.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 3/3

• Feb 2010 Stay

  Feb 2010 Stay

  • Guest shztrbl (Chester, CA, USA)
  • Date of stay 02/05/10
  • Review Submitted 02/20/10
  We stayed here for 4 1/2 days in February of 2010. It was one of the highlights of our Honeymoon to Costa Rica. We would HIGHLY recommend this house to anyone interested in staying. The house is extremely private and quiet-at the end of the road. The pool is cleaned every day by Claudio, and was so refreshing to use, that we were in it multiple times a day. The house itself is huge and Anna keeps it spotless. The bathrooms are large and have very nice showers. There is also an outdoor shower by the pool-not heated. We were able to watch monkeys using the trees on the property as a route of travel, which was very special. There are so many types of birds and butterflies I couldn't begin to name them all. The landscaping is gorgeous also. We don't speak any spanish, but Anna and Claudio's son Andres speaks very good english. He was able and very willing to help translate for us, give us advice, and he also gave us wonderful driving directions. (We never got lost!) Anna cooked two meals for us that were the best we had while in Costa Rica-we highly suggest asking her to cook for you! The house is not air conditioned, but has fans in every room. There are comfortable outdoor chairs and hammocks as well. There was just my husband and myself, so the house was more than we needed, but we loved it, and are so happy we decided to rent it. The bed was very comfortable as well. It is within 5 minutes of Manuel Antonio Park also, which is a plus. Also many restaurants and bars a very short distance away-like a few minutes away.

  Recommended for: Adventure seekers, girls getaway, families with teenagers, families with young children, romantic getaway, sightseeing, age 55+.

  Did you find this review helpful? Yes | No Helpful votes: 5/5

Fees and Rental Conditions:

• Property Damage Protection: $89
• Taxes Not included