Quien is mas treehouse? Life in the Costa Rican trees

Treehouse at Finca Bella Vista, Costa Rica; photo by David W. Smith

Remember the old Saturday Night Live skit, ‘Quien es mas macho?’ The contestants included Jack Lord from Hawaii-5-0 and Ricardo Montalban, who consistently came out on top.

Here we have a variation on that theme, with all the Costa Rican treehouses I’ve visited vying for the honor of being treehouser than thou.

One thing Ive noticed in my treehouse travels is that everyone has a different idea of what a treehouse should be.  Even the highest-ranking contestants–Finca Bella Vista, a sustainable treehouse community on the Southern Pacific coast, and Michael Cranford’s multi-level masterpiece on the Osa Peninsula–have philosophical differences about what constitutes a treehouse.

Cranford didn’t want to drill into the enormous Guanacaste tree that is now his home, so has his treetop home supported with wooden supports that go from the ground to the platforms that make up their home. Erica and Matt of Finca Bella Vista didn’t want support from ground so brought in experts from the States to rig their treehouses without support from below.

Here’s a sampler of the treehouses I’ve seen on this trip, starting with the whimsical and working towards the amazing feats of engineering and imagination.

1. The Treehouse Hotel in Arenal is fun but they’re not strictly treehouses—they’re cute little houselets up on stilts.

2. In Uvita, Tra McPeak from Memphis runs the Tucan Hotel, 100 meters east of the Costanera (the coast highway), a hostel with a restaurant, a pen full of rabbits, and high-speed wireless internet. They have a small wooden treehouse out front you can rent for $6/per person. The price includes hammocks but it’s extra for mattresses and bedding. Tra, who arrived in Costa Rica in 2006, says he built the treehouse for his kids but all the backpackers coming through wanted to sleep up there, so he now makes it available to guests.

Casa Arbol treehouse, Costa Rica; photo by David W. Smith

3. Humbert deSilva from France and Lisa Brouillard from Quebec have been in Costa Rica for almost 20 years. They run a small bed and breakfast, Casa Arbol, not far from Chacarita, where you turnoff to go to the Osa Peninsula. Their entire house is a work of art—Hugh makes the cupboards and the bed stands and the baths that look like something out of ancient Rome, not to mention the small treehouse that guests can stay in if they like. He never knows how a project will turn out when he begins it. He kept showing me carvings and rooms and tilework and saying, ‘When I finished, I saw that it was a”….swan, or frog, or a meditation on humanity.

4. Finca Bella Vista : a treehouse community in the jungle

Eric and Matt Hogan of Finca Bella Vista

A few short years ago Erica and Matt Hogan were camped in the mud by the Bella Vista River, up a rocky road to a spread of gorgeous but undeveloped land in Costa Rica’s Zona Sur. They weren’t sure what exactly was going to get them out of the mud, but dreamed of building a kind of Ewok village where they’d live in the trees and get to their neighbors’ houses via zipline.

Most people would have let that rather whimsical dream sputter and die, but Erica and Matt nailed it down and created Finca Bella Vista, a sustainable treehouse community with 82 lots available for people who want to live off the grid and in the trees. They’ve strung 18 ziplines, which they use fir both transportation and fun, but eventually there will be 45.

Treehouse at Finca Bella Vista, Costa Rica; photo by David W. Smith

We stayed in the first treehouse they built, and once I was 50 feet up in a structure cradled by three trees, listening to the roar of a nearby waterfall (visible from the top floor), I sighed and thought, This is it. This is the real thing.

5. At home in the trees: Michael Cranford’s treehouse on the Osa Peninsula

Michael Cranford and Rebecca Amelia were drinking margaritas in Boquete, Panama, talking about how as kids they’d retreat to the trees when they needed to get away. A few hours and numerous drinks later, they were sketching designs for a treehouse on napkins.

Michael Cranford's treehouse in Costa Rica; photo by Michael Cranford

Years later, the scrawled blueprints became reality when they hauled a few platforms built on the ground up into an enormous Guanacaste tree on their land on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica.

That was about a year ago, and Michael and Rebecca now live full-time in the trees, with Siete, a miniature husky, and Reina, an aging brindle boxer.

Breakfast nook in the treehouse;l photo by Michael Cranford

The treehouse is a true home, with a spacious, fully-equipped kitchen, guest bedrooms, an office for each of them, and a master  bedroom. Eighty percent of the wood used for the treehouse is downed hardwood from the jungle that is their backyard. They have internet and cable, flush toilets, and plenty of hot water in the shower.

They’ve seen a sloth right outside the kitchen, 3 kinds of monkeys—howlers, white face, and squirrel—come through regularly, and scarlet macaws hang out in the nearby branches.

They rent the place out occasionally—check their web site.

“I learned more about myself working with this tree,” says Michael, “than I have through any other life experience.”

Michael is a painter as well as an architect and visionary. “I moved down [to Costa Rica in 1998] to become an artist,” he says. He sold his painting contracting business in Colorado Springs, and gave himself “a window of 3-4 years to paint.” He painted 6 days a week.

That’s his goal this year, too—to do nothing but paint.  He created the painting below before he created his actual treehouse.

Boom time greed and condo ghost towns in Playas del Coco

Rick Vogel, the genial host at Rancho Armadillo in Playas del Coco, is a good natured guy. But he pulls no punches when describing what’s going on in his adopted town and country.

“Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered,” he says, speaking of boom time greed in Coco.

Boom time became bust time a few years ago. Bruce Hammond of Better Homes Realty in Playas del Coco said that as far as he could see, the downturn here started in July of 2008 but by October of that year it was like “someone hit the ‘off’ switch.” Almost $3 billion of planned development was put on hold.

But back in the days of sky’s-the-limit condo flipping there were realtors, says Rick, who pulled some pretty hoggish stunts. Like selling a piece of property they knew didn’t have access to water and never would, not once but multiple times, as each new buyer discovered that he could build his dream home but his dream faucets would always be dry.

“We’re in a desert here,” said Rick. “The problem is water.” I’ve been hearing that sentiment everywhere I go in Costa Rica, from the ‘cielo roto’ (broken sky) valleys where it rains almost all the time, to the dry Guanacaste coast, even hotter and drier since swaths of the coastal dry forests have been cut down.

Another trick he saw was that a realtor would sell a local property for, say, $200,000, get a $50,000 deposit, use that $50,000 to buy the property from the Tico owners, then pocket the remaining $150,000.

These are not local Tico realtors, but foreigners with the imprimatur of multinational realty companies on their business cards. (I learned that you pay maybe $25,000 for a franchise and that you get pretty much nothing but the name).

Many condo projects in Costa Rica ground to a halt when the world economy took a nosedive

Playas del Coco has dozens of condo projects that started up years ago and now languish half-completed, rebar ladders rusting and cement foundations crumbling before they’re even built on. One huge construction crane visible in a development up the hill hasn’t moved, say the locals, for at least a year.

Many condos were sold in pre-construction, and some of those condos still haven’t been built. I met an African-American man from Louisiana (I comment on his race because most U.S. expats I meet are white) in line at the ATM.

“Do you live here?” I asked.

“For better or worse,” he said, “I guess I do. Or I’m trying.”

He’d bought a pre-construction condo from Mapache and, four years later, it still wasn’t built. I don’t think Mapache is the only developer not delivering. The building of these mammoth complexes goes in phases, with continued construction funded by condo sales. When the world economic downturn put a huge dent in sales, much construction ground to a halt.

We talked to a Tica who ran a bar in Paraiso (near Playa Negra) who said many of the locals are out of work because all the developments that were employing them as builders or watchmen or cooks for the workers are ‘parado’ – stopped.

Like they say, when the United States sneezes, Costa Rica gets pneumonia.

If you want to look for a silver lining, it might be that in this climate it’s a buyer’s market. But as always, buyer beware.

Photos by David Webster Smith

Costa Rica Blog

You’ll find the latest on Costa Rica right here, whether I’m posting from the (muddy & pot-holed) road or from my (marginally less muddy) desk back home. Check back often for news on politics (Costa Rica has its first female president!), real estate, immigration, health care (medical tourism is on the rise), and expat life, not to mention the fun stuff like art, music, surfing, yoga, treehouses, hot springs, wildlife, volcanoes, national parks, hotels, and food.

I lived in San Jose, Costa Rica in 2000-2001, researching my book, Living Abroad in Costa Rica. I’ve been back twice a year since then, often for months at a stretch. I recently returned from a whirlwind road trip in Costa Rica, my 9th such trip. I also explored Nicaragua and Panama–you know a place better if you also know its neighbors.

Photo of a frog clinging to a bathroom mirror by David W. Smith.