Treehouses just 6000 miles from Costa Rica

I’ve posted before about treehouses in Costa Rica, but my treehouse mania knows no borders. Here’s a new treehotel in Sweden, 40 miles south of the Arctic Circle, with six rooms in the trees. A nice alternative if it’s too hot in Costa Rica.

the Mirrorcube treehouse at Sweden's Treehotel

the birds' nest treehouse at Sweden's Treehotel

Are Swedes colorblind or am I? This is the "blue cone" treehouse at Sweden's Treehotel.

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 I’ve 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 the 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 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 turn off to go to the Osa Peninsula. Their entire house is a work of art—Hugh made the cupboards and the bed stands and the bath 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; 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.

Mobbed by grasshoppers in a Guanacaste treehouse

There's no escaping the bugs in a house with no walls; photo by Erin Van Rheenen

Imagine a house up in the trees, open to the elements, with a view of a pristine stretch of Costa Rican beach. It’s Paul and Jeanne Pidcock’s house, on the Pura Jungla eco-reserve, where Ray Beise took a dried-up cow pasture and lovingly reforested it into something lush and beautiful. He sells lots to like-minded people who agree to abide by the eco-friendly rules of the realm.

Sound good? Well, yes and no. In theory, the idea of no walls (and of course, no windows, and no screens) sounds pretty cool. You are one with the toucans and the monkeys.

And, it turns out, an army of insects.

Things got ugly at dusk. It wasn’t so bad if you sat in the dark and listened to the wind. But if you turned on a light—to cook, to read, or to write, you were mobbed by flying insects, from no-see-ums to oh-my-god-did-you-see- that?

Where in Costa Rica might there be screened windows? Photo by Erin Van Rheenen

Leaf-green grasshoppers as long as my finger seemed especially friendly. They alighted on my book page, on my computer screen, and on the map I was studying to figure out the fastest road out of here. One crawled inside the bedside lamp I’d brought to the kitchen table (the lighting was dismal, probably because lights only attract bugs). The lamp was sideways so I couldn’t see the hopper’s body, but its long front feelers undulated out of the fixture as if the light itself had become insect-like.

When I conceded defeat and got up from my chair, I saw that I had sat on one of the poor little buggers.

Of treehouses, sloths, and the mighty mot-mot

Treehouses Hotel in Costa Rica; photo by David Webster Smith

“There’s still enough light to walk down to the waterfall, says Mark, who, with his wife Lucy, manages the Treehouses Hotel in Costa Rica’s evergreen-and-wet Arenal area.

We’d arrived at 4 in the afternoon on a misty afternoon, and the sun sets here promptly at 6pm. “Look for the arrow made of sticks. It points to the tree where we saw a sloth yesterday.”

Mark, on sabbatical from his job as copy editor at the Honolulu Advertiser, is checking us in. His shorts reveal a tattoo on his calf: Dennis the Menace wielding a tennis racquet. “I played tennis in college,”” he explains. His wife Lucy, who quit her social worker job in Hawaii to make the move to Costa Rica, went to the same college I did in California.

“Are you a slug?” she asks me. I’m  not sure what to make of her query until  I remember that UC Santa Cruz’s mascot is the yellow banana slug.

Bejuca, the lab/Rottweiler mix, and Little B, a Chihuahua meets miniature schnauzer, weave between our legs as Mark tells us breakfast is served between 8 and 9 and that yes, the treehouses do move. “But don’t worry,’ he says.  “They’re secure.”

Treehouse Number 1

I’ll take him at his word. And later, as we climb the 25 steps to tonight’s lodging, each step a piece of a small tree sawed in half lengthwise, it does feel secure. In fact it reminds me of a fire lookout tower bolted to one tree and surrounded by dozens more. It feels secure, yes, but when I later try to put lipstick on before we go out for dinner, the intermittent swaying makes me wonder if I’m going to smear it across my face. Until I get used to the movement I feel a little seasick up in our treetop boat.

We’re in Treehouse 1, the highest off the ground at about 25 feet and also the most compact, with the main room dominated by a full-sized bed made up with clean white sheets that set off a bouquet of pink and red heliconia. Good thing we’re slim, because we have to squeeze by each other to get to the toilet, a little room off to the side with screens for windows and a pint-sized sink. A room off to the other side houses what’s known in Costa Rica as a suicide shower, with wires sprouting from the showerhead, which warms the water as it comes out. It’s tricky—you need to have just the right flow coming for the apparatus for the heating element to kick in. (We get hot water, but in the morning the water gives out. But hey, we’re in a treehouse. In Costa Rica.)

There’s also a loft, up a ladder, with a thin foam full-sized mattress. Kids would love it up there. The treehouses have a/c (which we didn’t need), a fan, a mini-fridge, a coffeemaker (with coffee), a small place to hang clothes, and framed photos on the hardwood paneled walls of local fauna—sloths, howler monkeys, butterflies.

The hotel has three treehouses. Number 3 is closest to the road (you can’t see it but sometimes you can hear the trucks changing gears), but it’s bigger than number 1 and has a wraparound deck. If I return I’ll ask for Treehouse #3, further from the road than #2, bigger that our ‘honeymoon suite” unit and with floor-to-ceiling windows that make you feel  like you’re in the open air but still protected from bugs. There’s also a family of fruit bats that hang out by day on the front porch overhang (they don’t come inside unless you invite them). The lofts in Treehouses 2 and 3 are also more spacious and have two twin mattresses instead of the thin piece of foam in Treehouse 1.

Sloth sighting

The walk down to waterfall is just 3 km round-trip, on a wide path that would accommodate a 4 x 4—the usual Costa Rica backcountry road—two concrete strips for the tires, nearly overwhelmed by the growth around and between them. Grey skies, with late afternoon sun edging some of the clouds with orange and gold.

We spot the stick arrow and follow where it’s pointing to a cecropia tree. And yes, there’s the sloth! A big ball of fur with a strange little face.  We watch it for a while but it doesn’t oblige with any tricks. Now don’t get me wrong– sloths are very cool little creatures, but watching one is like studying a mangy fur rug on a plank floor.

Further on, the path swings by a stand of giant bamboo, the hollow trucks arcing over the path a good thirty feet above us. Soon we could hear the rush of a river swollen with rain, and then we see it:  a  muddy torrent that doesn’t invite a swim but instead a gasp of appreciation for the force of nature that water is in this zona.

Up the hill from the river are a series of small waterfalls, cascading into man-made pools that might have invited soaking had they been a little clearer (rainy season makes all the waterways cloud up) and if either the air or the water had been warmer.

Mural at Treehouses Hotel; photo by David Webster Smith

Breakfast with the birds

The next morning, there’s a full Tico breakfast: egg, gallo pinto (rice & beans), a tortilla, yucca fried up in a delicious latticework, juice, fruit, and cup after cup of coffee. We sit outside under the overhang of the common building (not a treehouse) and are entertained by a fiesta of birdlife that has come to feed on the sugar water and platanos.

We see brilliantly colored hummingbirds, red-headed woodpeckers, wren-like birds with bright blue feathers, regal mot-mots (“No one messes with the mot-mot,” says David after watching bird interactions for a while), and the dun-colored robin, which is, ironically, Costa Rica’s national bird.