Peace Lodge

The Peace Lodge is an 18-room, Five-Star, Boutique Hotel located on the grounds of the World Famous La Paz Waterfall Gardens Nature Park. The mountain views from the guest room balconies of the Poás Volcano and La Paz River Valley are breathtaking.

At 5,200 feet above sea level the temperature is cool and refreshing and the air is crisp and clean from the surrounding cloud and rainforest. As a Lodge Guest you will receive unlimited access to the hiking trails, waterfalls, trout lake, and animal sanctuary exhibits of La Paz Waterfall Gardens Nature Park.

You and our other guests will have the entire park to yourselves before 8 am and after 5 pm which are the optimal hours for observing the animals. The property resides at a very special altitude where cloud and rainforest coexist and is nestled between two national parks providing animals with a biological corridor.

While staying with us, please try to schedule some time for relaxation in our cozy Ventanas Verdes Spa, or you can enjoy an “In-Room ” massage in front of the grand river stone fireplace in your room.

Located less than one hour from the San José (Juan Santamaria) Airport, the Peace Lodge is the perfect place to begin or end your vacation. You do not need to spend your first or last day in a city hotel.

Please come spend them in the rain and cloud forest with us and still be close to the airport. We are also 20 minutes from the Poás Volcano, another “Must See” attraction in Costa Rica.

THE HISTORY
La Paz Waterfall Gardens Nature Park is a privately owned and managed ecological attraction that opened in the fall of 2000. The construction of the Hiking Trails, Butterfly Observatory and Reception began in July of 1998 and was mostly complete by the fall of 2000. Since opening we have continually added new and interesting exhibits to enhance the quality of your visit. Please Enjoy.

Our Mission Statement is to preserve and protect the natural environment of the area for the education, entertainment, and enjoyment of all ages of people. Our strategy combines environmentally conscious design with maximum educational impact to the visitor.

The Park comprises 70 acres (28 hectares) of land including approximately 40 acres of cloud and rainforest and 30 acres (12 hectares) of pastureland cut by a previous owner.

The forest area is currently protected under Private Animal Sanctuary Status and we are in the process of reforesting the unoccupied pastureland. We are also an active member of the Costa Rican Network of Private Nature Reserves, the Green Stamp Program, the Blue Flag Program and the Environmental Services Payment Program.

The 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) of hiking trails and viewing platforms constructed from 1998-2000 were designed and built without cutting one tree or vine system.

The materials for the trails and platforms were carried down on foot in order to avoid the use of heavy equipment in the forest. The credit for this tremendous accomplishment goes to Mr. Bernardo Picado who designed trails for the National Park System of Costa Rica prior to joining our team.

We added the Colibries Restaurant and the Serpentarium in 2004 and the Ranarium and Trout Lake in 2005. Our new enclosed Butterfly Observatory opened in August of 2006 along with the conversion of our existing Butterfly Observatory to an Aviary in the same year.

Construction on the Peace Lodge began in 2003 and various phases were completed over the next two years. In 2005 we had 17 units open. Less than a year after opening the Peace Lodge was featured on the Travel Channel show Trista and Ryan’s Honeymoon Hotspots International. There were only eight resorts outside the U.S. chosen for this honor.

In our effort to support the local economy, we employ 95% of our 120+ employees from the surrounding towns within a 12 mile radius (20 kilometers). These small communities previously existed almost exclusively on ranching and agriculture.

ARTISAN GUEST ROOM
This 650 square foot room has a king size canopy bed viewing a grand river stone fireplace. The interior design of the room is only surpassed by the view from the balcony of the La Paz River Valley and the Poás Volcano.

The best way to enjoy the view is from the Jacuzzi tub or swaying in the hammock on the balcony. The bathroom has an oversized mosaic tiled tub and elaborate waterfall shower.

DELUXE GUEST ROOM
For those who desire the feel of the rain forest even when they are inside, this is the room for you. This 800 square foot room has an unbelievable garden bathroom designed for the true nature lover. A seven-foot waterfall comes to life as you soak in the Jacuzzi tub in the garden. There is also a garden shower and enclosed shower.

All of this is surrounded by beautiful indoor landscaping and illuminated by a skylight. The room also has a Jacuzzi tub and hammock on the balcony for those picture perfect star gazing nights. A grand gas fireplace to view from the king size canopy bed makes the room complete.

MONARCH VILLA
This 1,200 square foot villa leaves nothing to be desired. First there are not one, not two, but three fireplaces to set the mood for this wonderland in the Cloud Forest.

VILLA LAGO
Villa Lago is the newest addition to Peace Lodge and is great for large families or couples travelling together. It hosts a living and dining area with a full kitchen, a large master bedroom and bath, a guest room with adjoining bath and a smaller bedroom with two single beds for children.

DINING & COCKTAILS
Our variety of Dining options provides an opportunity to sample both the Local Flavors of the region as well as some Coastal and International dishes.

Wether you are craving a fresh fried trout at The Big Trout Bar, fresh fruit from the nearby farms, or you are looking for Romantic Fine Dining at Vista Poás, you are sure to enjoy each delicious offering. At The Peace Lodge you will savor an Extraordinary Culinary Experience paired with the most relaxing and tranquil scenery, Provecho!

VISTA POAS RESTAURANT 
Vista Poas is our guests’ favorite intimate fine dining restaurant showcasing traditional locally-inspired Costa Rican flavors. Our menu features the best selections of grilled meats, homemade pastas, savory seafoods, and tender free range chicken dishes. At Vista Poas, our wait staff is happy to recommend a fine wine to pair with your gourmet dinner.

LAS TUCAS BAR
Guests are invited to join us at Las Tucas Bar for a pre-dinner drink, game of backgammon, or read from our lending library. This is the perfect place to share a cocktail with other guests as you talk about your rainforest adventures or catch the big game on our flatscreen TV. The Vista Poas menu and Specialty Meals menu is also available here upon request.

TORTILLAS RESTAURANT 
Begin your day with a gourmet breakfast featuring warm aromas of fresh brewed locally roasted coffee, fresh seasonal tropical fruits, homemade assorted breads and made to order omlellets, pancakes, french toast, and more!

With beautiful panoramic views of the cloud forest, the Poás Volcano, and La Paz Waterfall Gardens, this casual dining restaurant is the ideal place for our guests to enjoy a hearty meal.

BIG TROUT BAR 
The Big Trout Bar is a great place to have lunch, meet other guests over cocktails, relax in between hikes, or exchange fish stories. Choose from our chopped, wrapped or between-the-bun eats at this alfresco lakeside grill. We can even prepare your fresh caught rainbow trout for lunch or dinner. Grab your favorite drink, cast a line, and relax on the deck!

COLIBRIES RESTAURANT 
Our buffet at Colibries is honored to have recieved the highest rating (4 forks) possible from the Tourism Council. Just steps away from our humming bird garden, this filling buffet includes multiple selections of traditional Costa Rican dishes, full salad bar, pizza, garlic bread, french fries, fresh seasonal fruits, rice pudding, and unlimited fresh fruit juice, coffee, and tea.

LA TERRAZA
La Terraza is the perfect way to complete your La Paz Waterfall Garden’s tour! Located at the end of our spectacular waterfalls, this café offers fresh-brewed, locally-grown coffee, daily fresh-baked pastries, ice-cold beverages, and other treats.

WEDDINGS IN COSTA RICA
La Paz Waterfall Gardens at Peace Lodge is the picture-perfect location for your intimate celebration. Every magical sight, wondrous smell and sensual touch will create irreplaceable memories of your special day.

A lush tropical rain forest, spectacular waterfalls, birds, and butterflies await you and your guests for an extraordinary experience. We offer a variety of packages and services to take care of all of the details of your event, allowing you and your guests to unwind and enjoy all that La Paz Waterfall Gardens has to offer.

CAPTURE THE ESSENCE OF COSTA RICA
Welcome to the Peace lodge, the ultimate awakening of your senses! We pride ourselves on offering our guests the most unique, mountain-lodge experience in Costa Rica, combining the beauty of nature and the comfort of Five-Star service and facilities.

The ultra-upscale accommodations are uniquely themed to complement the inherent beauty of their rain and cloud forest setting and the detailed architecture exudes a natural elegance and sophistication with every room boasting a Jacuzzi tub, an impressive river stone fireplace along with a shower that transforms into a waterfall with the turn of a knob. Picture perfect views of the La Paz River Valley and the towering Poás Volcano complete the experience.

Our Award-Winning Lodge introduces guests to a symphony of traditional Costa Rican experiences celebrating the natural wonders of the cloud forest and the splendid creatures that inhabit this magical environment. Complimentary internet access is available to all our guests in the Rooms, Restaurants, Reception and almost the entire Park.

LA PAZ WATERFALL GARDENS 
When you think about Costa Rica, you probably imagine lush tropical rainforest, flowing white rivers, spectacular waterfalls, birds, butterflies, monkeys, hummingbirds, snakes, felines and frogs. At La Paz Waterfall Gardens, you are guaranteed to see all that and more.

Waterfall Gardens is open year-round from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with our last shuttle pick up from the exit trail at 5:00 p.m. We recommend our last visitors to enter the park by 3:00 p.m. to ensure that they have enough time to walk the primary trails. Reservations are not necessary. We can accommodate earlier arrivals and later departures with an advance request.

With over 3.5 kilometers of walking trails and educational animal exhibits to enjoy, we recommend a minimum of 2 hours for your visit. However, if you would like to see every trail and thoroughly enjoy the time spent in the Aviary, the Butterfly Observatory, Hummingbird Garden, Serpentarium, Jungle Cats Exhibit, Frog Exhibit, Historical Casita Experience and Trout Lake, you will probably want to stay the whole day.

“What if it rains?” This is the rainforest! We do offer raincoats for sale and our trails are designed so you will have places to stop and take cover.

What should you bring? You will need plenty of digital memory to take photos with your phone or camera!!! We recommend wearing comfortable walking shoes (preferably with a thick tread for hiking the concrete paver trails and hundreds of stairs), shorts or comfortable pants and a lightweight jacket or raincoat. Please keep in mind that the park ranges in altitude from 5,200 feet to 4,200 feet so it can get chilly when the clouds roll in.

THE MOST FAMOUS WATERFALLS IN COSTA RICA
As you wander the trails of La Paz Waterfall Gardens your senses will delight at the Five Waterfalls that line the trail. The La Paz Waterfall is the Most Famous Waterfall in Costa Rica where visitors often stop on the road to take photos on their way to Arenal, but the most stunning falls are above the La Paz Waterfall along a steep canyon accessed by our easy hiking trails.

The natural beauty of the mixed Cloud and Rainforest along the La Paz River makes these Five Waterfalls the most scenic in the country. Our waterfalls are accesible via paved trails and steps with hand railings, and you mostly descend the stairs so most ages and abilities can manage the walk.

JUNGLE CATS
Walk on the wild side as you come face to face with a 200 lb. male Jaguar looking back at you through safety glass. By reading our educational signage you will discover interesting facts about most of the species of wild felines found in the tropical Americas.

Our friendly cats leap around their habitat and often come to greet our visitors. Many of them are together with their offspring and enjoy playing games with each other in their beautifully designed habitats.

The center that previously housed these animals lost funding and had to close. The MINAE (the Costa Rican Ministry of the Environment) did not have the resources to care for the 35 felines so they were placed under the care of La Paz Waterfall Gardens.

The cats were either very old, injured, or had been exposed to humans for too long to be released back into the wild. Our mission is to preserve the genetics of these tropical species of felines.

Please note that we are completely against the capture or trade of illegally confiscated animals and we will one day seek to release the offspring of our cats into protected zones if a safe and reliable training program can be developed to do so.

BUTTERFLY OBSERVATORY
Our Observatory is the largest enclosed structure of its kind in Central America and is a spacious habitat and breeding ground for over 25 species of butterflies from Costa Rica. The reproduction laboratory offers an educational perspective into the stages of development of the most popular species found in the country.

With over 4,000 of these flighty creatures in the Observatory at any one time, you will be delighted by these colorful and fanciful creatures flying all around you. You will also be able to see and photograph them up close as they land and feed on the flowers and fruit feeding stations.

The spacious glass and acrylic design of our Butterfly Observatory allows our guests and day visitors the opportunity to enjoy the butterflies no matter what Mother Nature has in mind for the weather outside. Our laboratory allows guests to see the butterflies up close as they emerge from their chrysalis or in the larval stages of their growth cycle.

In Costa Rica there exists a great diversity of tropical habitats; this diversity is reflected in the great variety and abundance of butterflies. Approximately 90% of the butterfly species in Central America exist in Costa Rica, nearly 66% of neo-tropical butterflies and about 18% of all butterfly species of the world.

Our butterfly garden allows our visitors to see the female butterfly mating and depositing her eggs on the leaves of her host plant. In addition, our extensive butterfly educational signage and videos explain the lifecycle and metamorphosis in simple terms and allow our visitors to see firsthand the various stages of the lifecycle. The International Association of Butterfly Producers voted our Butterfly Conservatory the best in the world.

AVIARY
This is a bird watcher’s paradise, as you will see some of the most exciting and colorful birds of Costa Rica, without binoculars! Our Aviary is a refuge for wild birds that have been either captured illegally by hunters and confiscated by the government or donated by their owners. Many of these birds lack the basic skills to survive in the wild on their own.

SLOTHS
Everyone loves to come in and meet our three female, two-toed sloths, Rocket, Guapa, and Mulan! It is an incredible experience to see these rescued animals up close and La Paz Waterfall Gardens is one of the few places where you can do this.

HUMMINGBIRDS 
Our Hummingbird Garden attracts 26 different species of hummingbirds from Costa Rica, more species than any other in Costa Rica and quite possibly the world.

Approximately 57 different hummingbirds have been reportedly seen in Costa Rica and it is possible to see over 40% of them here! Our hummingbirds have no fear of humans and will feed just inches away from you. This makes our hummingbird garden the best place in the world to photograph hummingbirds close up.

MONKEYS
Spider Monkeys and White Faced Monkeys amuse our guests and themselves as they climb and swing through the trees of our Monkey Pass. Above, below, and beside you they will delight you with their antics.

All of these monkeys were donated to us by the MINAE, the Costa Rican Ministry of Wildlife and were confiscated from people who held them illegally. In many cases the animals were abused and in near death condition when we received them. We have rehabilitated them and combined them into sociable groups where they have become families.

Everyone wants to see monkeys when they visit Costa Rica but we have the best natural habitats in which to observe and photograph them. Our educational signage provides insight into the behaviors, reproduction and future survival of these monkeys in Costa Rica.

SNAKES
Our museum quality Serpentarium exhibits 30 of the most beautiful and deadly snakes of Costa Rica. The exhibition puts you face to face with such famous snakes as the Bushmaster, Terciopelo, Green Vinesnake, and Golden Eyelash Viper to name just a few.

FROGS
The best place to see frogs in Costa Rica is our free range Ranarium or frog exhibit where the frogs roam freely throughout our landscaped enclosure.

Because you are not looking at them through glass it is the perfect environment for taking photos of the frogs. Our educational signage and our knowledgeable guides are able to impart extensive information about the frogs in Costa Rica.

CASITA TIPICA
Enjoy life as it was a hundred years ago in our Casita de la Paz. This unique historical Costa Rican farmhouse reproduction was built using only the tools available to the average farmer a century ago.

Step back in time and taste typical Tico food including fresh milk (right from the cow), take a ride in an ox-driven cart, sample freshly made tortillas and see how the Ticos lived and worked on rural farms.

This casita gives a history tour and cultural insight into the lives of rural Costa Ricans. You will find a small coffee garden in front of the house and information about the history of coffee in Costa Rica and if the beans are ripe you might get to pick a few.

This reproduction was built using only the tools available to the average farmer at the turn of the twentieth century including axes, hand saws, hand planers, picks and chisels. However, in rural areas of Central America without road access and electricity many of the houses are similarly built today.

The architectural and structural design is based on a style frequently seen built in Central America over the past century. The roof contains authentic Nicaraguan baked tiles that have been produced for over four hundred years.

The origin of this roof style and tile fabrication developed in the Mediterranean area of Europe and was brought to the New World by the Spaniards. The foundation and stairs were formed by hand chiseling and shaping pieces of local volcanic rock.

The type of wood used in the construction is locally named “Cipres” or Cypress but this is not the case as it is actually a type of “Pine” that was brought from the alpine areas of Europe hundreds of years ago and flourished in the high mountain regions of Costa Rica.

It is often used in high altitude construction near where it is grown and has proven to be a strong, light, long-lasting wood with few termite or other insect infestation problems.

The wood-burning stove/oven was built by one of the two or three craftsman in Costa Rica able to design them so that the heat is reflected efficiently and the smoke exits the chimney. The trade was passed down to him by his father who learned the art of this construction from previous generations of craftsman in his family.

TROUT LAKE
Fresh water fishing anyone in our spring fed trout lake? Cast a line in our two level Trout Lake. Catch dinner or just have some fun! The Big Trout Bar is a great place to have lunch, meet other guests over cocktails, relax in between hikes or exchange fish stories. The deck is a great place to lie in the sun or take a dip in one of our two Jacuzzis.

We have fly fishing rods available as well as spin cast rods. We stock the lake monthly with rainbow trout which can be prepared in any way you would like by the kitchen either for lunch or dinner.

Imagine your own private trout lake with its own bartender. You can order a cocktail while casting a line. It is great entertainment for the kids with beautiful scenery. You can even take a swim in the cold lake and then jump into the hot Jacuzzi afterward. It is the best lake fishing in Costa Rica and a great place to teach your children how to fish.

Website: www.waterfallgardens.com

Rooms: 18

Price: from 450 EUR per night