Bijagua, Costa Rica

Origins Lodge

Price per night from$1,043.20

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD1,043.20), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Origins Lodge Photos

Style

Rainforest roundhouses

Setting

Cloud-level canopy

Explore

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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.

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A welcome fruit basket

Facilities

Photos Origins Lodge facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Seven suites, including a treetop villa.

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

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.

Pet‐friendly

Well-behaved pets are welcome to stay in any room here for free. See more pet-friendly hotels in Bijagua.

Children

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.

Food and Drink

Photos Origins Lodge food and drink

Top Table

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.

Location

Photos Origins Lodge location
Address
Origins Lodge
200 South from Pueblo Nuevo School Canalete
Upala
Costa Rica

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.

Reviews

Photos Origins Lodge reviews
Holly Clark

Anonymous review

By Holly Clark, Scene snapper

Stop number five on our Costa Rican adventure and we thought we’d seen it all, until we arrived at this secluded lodge in the mountains — so secluded that it almost entirely blends into the hillside. It really gives off the vibe that James Bond could in fact be hiding out here, so we were half expecting to be greeted by the man himself. ‘If only we’d choppered in,’ I said, spying the nearby helipad. ‘It just feels like the right thing to do here.'

There is no lobby, no formalities, just three big smiling faces in the driveway with open arms, ready to pour us a drink and show us around. We felt like we’d stepped into an extremely generous friend’s home — cosy, open, relaxed and with the familiarity of my glass of wine being topped up without hesitation.

We’d started the day a few hours' drive away, and stopped off en route to hike the Río Celeste waterfall. It was a little bit of a tourist trap, as most wonders of the world are, and in true rainforest style, largely wet and muddy, but well worth the slight detour nevertheless.

Our resulting ‘look’ therefore was not quite how I’d planned to arrive at our most anticipated stop of the trip, but it didn’t seem to bother the toucans too much and we were soon whisked up to our home for the next couple of nights. We were staying in one of just seven villas on the estate. Ours was called Mariola — named after the mariola bees (which are notably stingless) that had made their home on the terrace. Finally, I had found a sweet, honey-making bug in Costa Rica that I wasn’t in fear of. I already loved this place.

Our eyes swooned taking it all in, each thoughtful detail at a time. Our villa had a rustic, windowless façade, which led to a safari-lodge-esque bedroom, with a colossal bed, an outdoor shower made from local volcanic rock and products bursting with ylang-ylang plants from the estate. 

While I was checking out the room and taking far too many photographs, Mr Smith had already stoked the fire and plunged into the hot-hot tub on the terrace. The rest of the afternoon floated by as we soaked in the symphony of jungle sounds, with occasional yelps of ‘Quick, look!’ as an insanely beautiful bird flew past or we spied a ginormous iguana in a tree.

There was a drama to Origins Lodge. The sounds, the light, the feeling of being completely alone in the jungle and the dramatic weather fronts that flew past. Rumbling clouds turning into blue skies, turning into torrential downpours and then clearing to reveal neighbouring Nicaragua in the distance. Wow.

It was soon time to leave the safety of our villa and take a guided night walk. Swamp, crocodile, snake, poison and deadly are not the kind of words I like to hear before going on a walk. But, we were in Costa Rica and instead of heading to the bar for an aperitif, you pull on your wellies, set your torch to its brightest and take a guided walk into the unknown… hoping you’ll make it back for a game of pool and to recount what an incredible time we had in this review. And we did. I promise!

Surviving some close encounters, we headed back to base that night for dinner. One of the many highlights of Origins Lodge is the food and in keeping with the theme of switching off, the staff make it incredibly easy to do just that. There's no menu to choose from, just a blackboard detailing the three-course lunch and dinner for that day. If you’re staying a few nights or not feeling too peckish, you can request something a little lighter too. The chefs will rustle most things up on request — which is quite remarkable given the location in the middle of the jungle.

A glass of wine and three courses later, we were ready to head to bed. By this point of the day, we’d clocked around 20,000 steps and drifted off straightaway, only to wake up the next day feeling refreshed and laughing at how loud the howler monkeys are as they chatter away to each other in the morning. No lie-ins here — the monkeys will make sure of that.

Not ones to miss out on an activity, we’d signed up for the morning farm-yard tour and by 8am, found ourselves sat on a stool, milking a cow. I sent a photo home to a group of mates: ‘Is this your idea of a holiday?’ one said. And honestly, absolutely yes. Origins Lodge brought us close to nature, fully immersed us in its magical landscape and made us forget about everything else. We left the world behind for a couple of days and are already longing to return.

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Price per night from $999.00