Where you’ll stay
You won’t be staying in a hotel
A place of your own in every region — a kitchen, a terrace, and your own front door. No front desk, no room service, nobody to check in with.
Hotels are fine
They’re just not how anyone actually lives here. You check in at a desk. You eat when the restaurant decides to be open. The kids share your room, so at eight o’clock you’re all whispering in the dark because there’s nowhere else to be. You spend the week as a guest inside someone’s business.
So we built the trip around the opposite. In each region you get a place of your own: a kitchen, a living room, a terrace, and a door. You come back from the waterfall and drop your wet things wherever you want. You make coffee at five in the morning because you woke up early and nobody is stopping you. The kids go to their room and you get your evening back.
Here’s the honest version of the trade. You give up the front desk, the restaurant downstairs and the daily housekeeping. You get more space for less money, a kitchen, and a week that feels like living here rather than visiting. If what you love about a hotel is being waited on, say so and we’ll book you a hotel — we mean that, and we have vetted ones. But if what you want is the second thing, this is better and it isn’t close.
There’s a reason we can do this, and it isn’t a booking trick.
The homes at the volcano are ours
Not a listing we resell — ours. Five homes at the foot of Arenal, side by side on one piece of land, owned and hosted by the same family that runs Destitrip. Four of them have two bedrooms and sleep four; one is a studio for two. Eighteen beds in total, which is the honest reason we can’t take everybody at once — and the reason a group of twelve can take the whole property and still each have their own door.
Volcano views, air conditioning, a full kitchen, free parking, and a lockbox — so you let yourself in whenever your flight actually lands, not whenever a front desk feels like it. Twenty minutes from the volcano, with a supermarket down the road for the beer and the fruit you’ll want at eleven at night.
And here’s the part that matters when you’re handing money to a company you just met. We’re new as an agency. We are not new at this. These homes have been hosting travelers for nine years, under Superhost status — and the home we’ve had longest carries a 4.71 rating across 294 reviews. That record belongs to William Villegas, who founded this company and owns these homes. He isn’t a logo on a website — he’s a person you can look up before you send us a single message, with nine years of being judged in public by strangers who slept in his house. He’s still here, and the reviews are still there for you to read.
Which raises the fair question of what happens in the two regions where the homes aren’t ours.
What that actually buys you
The difference you’ll feel by day two
Arrive whenever you land
A lockbox, not a check-in line. Flights into San José run late and the drive is three hours. Nobody should end that day negotiating with a night porter.
A kitchen you’ll actually use
Not to cook every night — for the coffee at dawn, the fruit you bought at the roadside stand, and the toast for the kid who won’t eat anything else.
Rooms, plural
The kids have their own. You get your evening back. On a nine-day trip that stops being a nicety around the third night.
The volcano from your terrace
Arenal makes its own weather and reveals itself on its own schedule. Living underneath it beats booking a viewpoint and hoping.
Monteverde and the coast are not ours — and we won’t pretend otherwise
We own homes in one region. Not three.
So for the cloud forest and the Pacific we’re doing exactly what we did with the guides: finding private homes, meeting the owners face to face, walking the rooms ourselves, and contracting them directly rather than clicking a button from a desk. Each one has to clear the bar our own homes set, or it doesn’t go in your itinerary.
That work is underway right now, and we’d rather tell you that here than have you assume a polish we haven’t earned yet. If a region isn’t ready, we’ll say so before you book — not after.
And if you’d rather have a hotel,
say so
Some people want the front desk, the restaurant and the daily housekeeping, and there is nothing wrong with that — sometimes it’s exactly right. We vetted the hotels too, with the same 62,000 reviews and the same rubric, and we’ll swap one into your trip without a sigh.
This is your vacation. We have an opinion, not a rule.
Your own place
What’s included
A place of your own in each of the three regions — a kitchen, a living room, a terrace, and a door that locks behind you
At the volcano the homes are ours — volcano views, air conditioning, a full kitchen and free parking
Self check-in with a lockbox, whatever time your flight actually lands
Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in all five of our Arenal homes
Twenty minutes from the volcano, with a supermarket down the road for the beer and the fruit you want at eleven at night
Nine years of hosting under Superhost status — 4.71 across 294 reviews on the home we have had longest
You give up the front desk, the restaurant downstairs and the daily housekeeping — that is the trade
Prefer to be looked after? Say so on the call — we have four vetted Arenal hotels and swapping costs you no argument
Our five homes
What a week here looks like
FAQ
Questions about where you’ll sleep
The homes at the volcano are ours — the same family that runs Destitrip owns and hosts them, and has for nine years. In the other regions we contract directly with the owner of each place. Either way you book the whole trip with us, at one price, and we handle the keys. You’re not assembling anything.
You message us, and a real person answers in under 15 minutes while we’re working — and if it can’t wait, you call and someone picks up, day or night. In La Fortuna that person is the family who owns the place and lives twenty minutes away. In practice that’s faster than most front desks — and considerably more motivated.
No. The kitchen is there if you want it, and most people use it for coffee and the occasional breakfast. Nothing is expected of you, and the place is cleaned before you arrive.
It’s more space for less money, with a kitchen and a terrace — and no restaurant downstairs, no room service, no gym. If what you love about hotels is being waited on, tell us and we’ll book you a hotel. If what you want is to feel like you live here for a week, this is better and it isn’t close.
Up to eighteen people across the five homes at the volcano, which sit together in the same small cluster. Bigger groups than that we can’t do honestly, so we’d tell you.
“Our guide spotted two sloths before we’d finished our coffee. And having our own place instead of a hotel room made it feel like we lived there for a week.”
Risk-free
Our launch guarantee: Transparent Price + Real Response
Your price includes everything. If a cost you weren’t told about ever shows up, we cover it. And once you’re here, a real person answers in under 15 minutes while we’re working — with a number to call for anything urgent, day or night.
Want to see the homes?
Tell us your dates and how many of you there are, and we’ll show you exactly which one you’d get — the floor plan, which door is yours, and the view from that terrace. You’ll get an instant reply on WhatsApp and book a video call with Marco.
That ceiling of eighteen beds isn’t a marketing line — it’s the whole business. Five homes, and from December through April they’re spoken for months ahead. If your dates are already fixed, this conversation is worth having now rather than in March.