If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD803.54), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Venture off-the-beaten-track, then a little bit further into the Costa Rican wilderness – and Origins Lodge will reveal its gravity-and-GPS-defying estate through towering bamboo plants and wildlife-filled foliage. Yellow-breasted toucans flit between the wooden roundhouses – where you can sleep with your head in the clouds on a canopy bed, and bathe in an outdoor volcanic-stone shower or valley-facing hot-tub. Garden-inspired mealtimes and guided-meditation sessions are set to a natural soundtrack of birdsong, jaguar roars, and tapir whistling – but the views of Lake Nicaragua and Tenorio Volcano are enough to make the loudest members of the animal kingdom fall silent, even just for a moment of hushed awe.
11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £727.10 ($908), including tax at 13 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of 5% per room per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include an organic Tico breakfast made using freshly gathered ingredients from the estate’s vegetable garden, farm, and natural lagoons.
Also
Golf-carts are available to transport guests with mobility issues around the estate, but the jungle boardwalks and treetop nature of the lodges sadly make this hotel unsuitable for wheelchair-users.
At the hotel
Organic garden, network of trails, yoga pavilion, wine cellar, carpentry studio, craft boutique, charged laundry service, and free WiFi. In rooms: fire-heated outdoor bath, private terrace, coffee machine, organic minibar, binoculars, walkie-talkies, raincoat, and hotel’s own organic bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Six standalone lodges cling to the hillside, ensconcing guests within the sights and sounds of the rainforest foliage – waking to a natural alarm clock of howler monkeys, and falling asleep to the pitter-patter of tropical rain. Wooden shutters on every rounded wall open your lodge up to the elements, allowing a cooling breeze to billow out your giant canopy bed. When the mist starts to set in across the cloud forest, retreat to your hot-tub (heated by the wood-burning stove on your terrace). As the estate’s only three-bedroom option, Three Bedroom Vertigo Lodge takes aerial living to new heights. This treetop-suspended stay feels adventurous yet cocooning, and is kitted out with lots of creature comforts – not to mention a fully-equipped kitchen and volcano-facing living room (who needs a TV?)
Poolside
Gently curving around the front of the restaurant, the natural infinity pool (open daily from 7am to 9pm) at Origins Lodge makes you feel as though you’re floating above the clouds. Swims are suspended at canopy level, with sweeping views across the rainforest towards Nicaragua Lake and the still-smoking Tenorio Volcano.
Spa
Fully immersed within the jungle wilderness, the thatched Laka-Tii Spa Suite (which translates to ‘earth’ and ‘water’ in the local indigenous Maleku dialect) grounds guests in the healing powers of nature. Plant-based treatments rooted in ancient traditions vary from volcanic stone and bamboo massages to facials, body wraps, and scrubs using medicinal herbs grown in the Origins garden (which also give the steam room its earthy aroma). Out on the tree-fringed deck, there’s a wooden hot-tub and loungers to relax in while listening to birdsong and the slow rustling of sloths in the branches above. Guided yoga classes, meditation sessions, and breathwork therapy take place in the shala, which is covered yet still open to the elements. Holistic wellness programmes are available on a bespoke basis, which include three organic superfood-packed meals a day, emotional release therapy, one-to-one time with the lodge’s healer, and health-focused activities.
Packing tips
With all the outdoorsy activities on offer (and changeable weather), you’ll be changing kit several times a day. Sporty layers, a good waterproof, and sturdy footwear are all must-brings. And this isn’t the place to go style-over-substance on swimwear.
Also
The circular skylight in your lodge is inspired by pre-Columbian roundhouses, which welcomed positive energy at dawn and banished any negativity from the day at sunset.
Babysitting is available on request; Three Bedroom Vertigo Lodge sleeps up to six across three treehouse-style bedrooms.
Sustainability efforts
Origins Lodge is as green at heart as its verdant jungle surroundings (and B-Corp certification) suggest. Reforestation efforts include planting 500 native trees throughout the 111-acre estate every year, particularly on the edges of its rivers to help boost the natural water supply. Any fallen trees are gathered and taken to the on-site woodworking studio to be transformed into furniture, flooring and beams for the lodge. You can also purchase tree-planting packages through the hotel’s partner, Planta Mi Árbol, a Costa Rican foundation dedicated to fighting deforestation in Central America. The Origins team support the important conservation work of the Costa Rica Wildlife Foundation, including helping to save the Central American Tapir from extinction. The resident bee-keeping team look after 25 beehives which are home to Melipona, tiny stingless bees which are integral to the ecosystem (and produce the purest honey in the world with medicinal powers, which the lodge’s chefs use as a secret ingredient). The on-site organic garden supplies the kitchen with fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs, which are grown and composted using earthworms (a special vermiculture technique which enhances the quality of the soil). Completing the jungle-to-table picture, diners can sample fish from the estate’s lagoons; organic eggs, milk, and cheese from the on-site farm (specifically from Origins’ beloved dairy cow Margaret); and natural sugar-cane juice from a small local plantation. Origins Lodge is entirely plastic-free, and operates its own waste-management system and recycling programme. Bathrooms are stocked with the lodge’s own organic products made from ylang-ylang trees on property, and you’ll find solar water tanks in each air-conditioning-free room, which provide energy-efficient hot water.
You’ll have jungle surround-sound wherever you sit, but the volcanic views are best from the poolside tables.
Dress Code
Lean into your wild side with loud prints, or opt for a more minimalist, modern explorer look in cream linens and safari-style headwear.
Hotel restaurant
From its rainforest-wrapped roost on the mountainside, El Salto restaurant plies hungry hikers with freshly baked pastries, tropical fruit jams and detoxifying juices for brunch, garden-grown salads and plant-based bowls for lunch, and organic sandwiches at afternoon tea-time. The French-inspired multi-course dinner menu is cooked in the open kitchen by a roster of visiting chefs (specially selected by Michelin-starred Jean-Luc L’Hourre). Ingredients are almost exclusively gathered from the estate’s gardens, farm, and lakes, supplemented by handpicked local suppliers who share the hotel’s farm-to-table ethos.
Hotel bar
You can sit on the curved wooden deck of the Skyview bar (open 7am to 10pm) and dangle your feet in the infinity pool, as you sip sugar-cane cocktails and sommelier-selected wines from El Salto’s cellar. Colourful cushions in pineapple-yellow and lime-green are scattered on swing chairs and tree-trunk benches, and there’s a pool table and open fire pit to gather around on chillier evenings. Try your hand at mixing local spirits with fruits and herbs (you’ve picked yourself) in a private cocktail class, making your own all-natural tipples the Tico way.
Room service
Nature’s bounty is at your beck and call between 7am and 9pm.
You’ll discover the true meaning of ‘the ‘middle of nowhere’ at Origins Lodge, an off-grid retreat perched high in the rainforest-clad mountains of northern Costa Rica.
Planes
Liberia Guanacaste is the closest international airport (90 minutes by car from the lodge). Alternatively, Juan Santamaría Airport in San José is four hours by road. The hotel is happy to help with transfers from both airports, just ask their concierge ahead of arrival.
Automobiles
You’ll need to trust the GPS on the twisty-turny drive up to Origins Lodge, which takes you through the rural mountain village of Bijagua onto an unmarked road. Just keep going until you hit (not literally, we hope) a rock wall which, if you look closely, bears the letter ‘O’. There’s free onsite parking and valet service at the lodge.
Other
Private air transfers are available with the hotel’s heliport and landing strip – again, just ask the concierge for more details.
Worth getting out of bed for
Nature lovers can answer the call of the wild at Origins Lodge with a different activity for every hour of the day (and night). Biodiversity hikes, birdwatching, horse-riding, waterfall treks, lagoon fishing, and nocturnal nature walks are all available on the estate – as well as visits to the hotel’s farm (where you can milk Margaret, the friendly dairy cow) and organic garden (you’ll be talked through the medicinal herbs grown there by one of the botanists). The lodge is also well-connected with local guides and artisans, and can organise bespoke itineraries off-site – such as chocolate tours at a nearby cocoa farm, hikes to Rio Celeste (a magical waterfall in the Tenorio National Park), boat safari tours along the Rio Frio, wildlife-watching in the Tapir Valley Nature Reserve and local butterfly sanctuary, tasting wines made from sugar cane, rainforest zip-lining, water-tubing, kayaking, and river-rafting down rapids like Cascabel Falls.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this eco-friendly mountain lodge above the cloud forest and unpacked their Melipona honey and organic bamboo bags, a full account of their wildlife-spotting break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Origins Lodge in northern Costa Rica…
There’s off-grid, and then there’s Origins Lodge. Before four-wheel drives and helicopters, only the most intrepid travellers on a hike that went awry might have stumbled across its conical grass-topped roofs – poking out like a mystical village above the cloud-shrouded canopy. And even after you’ve fallen off the map and found yourself within this tropical paradise, there are adventures to be had at every rainforest-embedded turn – starting with finding your room, which looks like an eco-conscious cross between Tarzan’s Costa Rican treehouse and a pre-Columbian dwelling. Nature reigns supreme in each canopy-tucked, (mostly) tech-free lodge – TV screens are swapped out for jungle swathes, cooling breezes replace air-conditioning, and binoculars by the bed plus walkie-talkies amp up the old-school explorer look and feel. There’s not much need to branch out from all 111 acres of the estate’s leafy embrace, but the wildest at heart can saddle up one of the horses grazing on the hillside, cross La Tigra river, and ride off into the sunset.
