The architecture of the house is unique and really cool. You'll not find another house like this.
Pros:
*on demand hot water - a rarity in Costa Rica, in our experience
*there's a washing machine
*neat house, lots of natural light
* cool natural sounds - howler monkeys! 4 am rooster!
What you're renting here is a main house with the kitchen, utility room, living area and master suite as well as a detached "guest house" with two bedrooms and a bathroom. For our family of 6 (2 adults, 4 smallish kids) this setup was far from ideal. The guest house door can be locked shut, but then must be opened from either side by key. I did not feel comfortable either locking the kids in OR leaving the door unlocked. So, our family of 6 all slept in the main house.
The house in general needs some TLC. When we first arrived, none of the three sinks in the kitchen drained properly - yuck. The on-site caretaker was able to get someone to partly fix the sinks, which made them usable. Besides that, there were puddles indoors whenever it rained. The floor hadn't been swept and the toilets were dirty.
The view at this house could have been spectacular. The porch in the rear of the house is awesome. But. There is a wall of teak trees (not visible in the promotional pictures) obscuring any real beauty that's out there.
Getting to and away from this property is not for the faint-hearted, at least in rainy season. The road is deeply rutted, steep, twisty and bumpy. It took a good half hour for us to get to the hard road from the house. The views along the road are really nice, though. And we saw all sorts of interesting rural scenes. Getting to the beach at Samara took us an hour, easily.
No matter what your GPS tells you, do not turn left out of the driveway and expect to get anywhere good, at least during rainy season. We were "headed to Nosara", as per the GPS, and nearly blundered into a small river. Yikes! Getting back UP the steep hill we'd gone down was dodgy.
Twice when we returned to the home after having been out, a mob of well-meaning but ill-mannered dogs greeted us at the car. Our small children were terrified, though not harmed.
If you enjoy sleeping past 4a, either bring some serious earplugs or stay elsewhere. There are no curtains on the windows, but it really wasn't light before 5:30a. The rooster, however, started at 4a. Every day.
We really wanted to like this house. But I can't recommend it.