THE GEM OF ATENAS: TROPICAL PARADISE RETREAT

We spent almost 3 weeks in this beautiful house. The photos don’t do it justice! The house is open concept with cathedral ceilings, and is nicely decorated. It sits on 20 acres of land, is very private, yet only 5 min drive to town. We enjoyed awaking to the sounds of the local birds every morning. Caretaker Emilio, accompanied by his two friendly dogs, Bella and Zeus, tidies the yard and cleans the pool but was non-intrusive and respectful of our privacy. He and his wife live at the edge of the property. If you walk down the driveway and he’s out and about, he will usually pick some fruit for you from the orange or lime trees!

The kitchen is well equipped, and there is a large new gas BBQ outside as well. The beds were very comfortable. The master bedroom has a king bed and ensuite bath. There are two guest rooms that worked well for us, as our adult children joined us for a week. One room has a double bed; the other has a double bed plus bunk beds. The guest rooms share a bathroom.

The house has plenty of parking and outside sitting areas on three sides so we never felt crowded and could always find a lovely spot to sit and enjoy the breezes and the birds. There are chairs, hammocks, and two outdoor eating areas. The pool area is well maintained and beautiful- especially when lit at night! There is always a place to find shade and cool, and the house is high enough to have breezes blowing through the windows and doors. The owner’s claim that you don’t need air-conditioning is accurate. The wifi worked well although the bandwidth (about 4 MB/s) is somewhat low by North American standards. (This may matter to those who plan to work remotely as I did.) That said, I had enough bandwidth to Skype or FaceTime into meetings with only minor problems.

The property managers Piet and Yvonne are friendly and helpful. They offer additional services at reasonable cost. We took advantage of their airport transport. This allowed us to enjoy the last day of our children’s visit without the stress of driving them back to SJO airport after dark. One final comment. It is easy to provide a positive review when everything goes smoothly. However, we had a small hiccup with our booking as can happen to anyone. Piet and Yvonne, and owner Tonia, went above and beyond to sort it out for us. We highly recommend Colina Paula, as well as Tonia, Piet and Yvonne who were a pleasure to work with. We are already discussing a return trip!

The property is lovely. My only issue with the property itself was the fact the pool was only cleaned once during the 8 days I was there, it was quite dirty. Also the power was off for nearly two days, I lost much of the food in the frig and freezer and was unable to cook anything.

The main problem, though, was with the property managers. They were supposed to be arranging tours for me, but I found out the day before I was to leave on my trip the tours I had hoped to take we’re going to be 3 times as expensive as I had been led to believe. Upon arriving, I tried to arrange some alternatives with the property managers, but nothing worked out. In the end the only tour I had was a little coffee plantation tour. I saw nothing of Cost Rica.

Communication with these folks was really difficult. Most of the time they didn’t respond to my texts or phone calls. Even when the power went off, I had to go to the groundskeeper and get him to call them in order to get a response. This meant a 3 hour delay on a Friday to fix the problem. Consequently, the electricians had to come back on Saturday. No it has not been a positive experience.

My family and I we just spent 17 days in Costa Rica in this wonderful property when every morning by around 5:30 in the morning you can hear the birds you can hear roosters So that means time to get up do some exercises drink some Costa Rican coffee and start your day exploring Costa Rica Also I have to thanks Emilio property keeper for all his help

We have rented homes in Costa Rica many times and this was definitely one of our favorites. We hope to return here sometime if it’s available when we need it. We loved the privacy, the landscaping, the outdoor seating and many other things. It’s a very beautiful place. Thanks for sharing it!