Tilajari Resort Hotel

We stayed 2 nights here, as part of a tour of Costa Rica. Wish it had been longer! After staying in the Tortoguero region on the Caribbean coast, and before a week on the Pacific coast, this was our favourite hotel. The grounds were well tended and full of iguanas and interesting birds. There was even a sloth up a tree as our coach drove away!

“Great for wildlife”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

We stayed 2 nights here, as part of a tour of Costa Rica. Wish it had been longer! After staying in the Tortoguero region on the Caribbean coast, and before a week on the Pacific coast, this was our favourite hotel. The grounds were well tended and full of iguanas and interesting birds. There was even a sloth up a tree as our coach drove away!

As other reviewers have said, there are large iguanas up the trees and a wonderful butterfly enclosure where you can see every stage, from eggs on the leaves to the caterpillars, pupae suspended in airy boxes, and the butterflies finally emerging and flying around.

The rooms are organised in blocks, and we had a corner room (217) on the 2nd floor. The shower was powerful and we had good air-con, a nice balcony & a spacious room. The only criticism is that it was close to the road, and early-morning buses picking up their passengers at 7 a.m. leave their engines running ~ highly irritating! The ground-floor rooms facing the sloping lawns down to the river were in a better position.

The food was reasonably priced & delicious (try the Mahi-mahi with shrimps & salad for dinner). Breakfast is a buffet, extensive & well tended, with a strong American influence.

I don't normally eat much but couldn't resist the fruit and pancakes with maple syrup, & of course wonderful coffee. There's a pool table & free internet access, useful for reassuring the kids back home!

The pool had plenty of sun loungers & shady trees, although if you want a mango juice or whatever, go & get it yourself, don't wait for the waiter to bring it out. We ordered drinks & he forgot all about us! From here we went to the thermal baths, a definite "must" in the evening, just lying in the hot waters gazing up at the stars & distant volcano.

Would love to go again & stay longer, but with a different room away from the road. Tilajari means "evergreen" in local language, & it's certainly that ~ like a botanical garden!

“Loved the Tilajari”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

We booked our vacation through Gate I Travel. Hotel Tilajari was included in the package and it was fantastic. The rooms are spacious and the bathrooms new. The Tilajari is actually on a wildlife reserve so you can see tropical birds and the river passes right by some of the hotel rooms and spa/swimming pool. Most of the tours booked through the hotel/Gate I were great, but we were disappointed with the horseback ride. Some of the prices are high, so look around for good deals. I would definitely recommend Gate I and the hotel. We talked to some other travelers who paid 3 times the price as we did and weren't staying at such nice hotels. Gate I also put us at the Cariari Doubletree in San Jose and the Cloud Forest Lodge in Monteverde. Our agent, Kimber, recommended the La Paz Waterfall gardens near the Poas Volcano and this was a definite highlight of our trip. If you are staying near San Jose or Arenal check this place out!

“great resort for the price”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

We were in Costa Rica for 10 days, spending 4 nights at Tilajari. We were in a two bedroom with the balcony looking out over the river. The staff was always accomadating. We went on several tours and especially enjoyed the horseback ride to the Arenal Volcano with Justin Hamilton. The food at the resort was excellant. Would stay here again when returning to the area.

Omena Michigan

“Wonderful Introduction to Costa Rica”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

This was the perfect place for our family to start our 3 week trip in Costa Rica. We loved the setting on the river and our room was the last one at the far end of the property and was quiet and I thought it was very pretty and the beds were excellent. It was very comfortable for our family of five. We saw all kinds of fabulous birds, lots of butterflies, sloths, lizards of all sizes, bats and a possum on the property. We ate breakfast and dinner at the restaurant and played in the giant pool (which was a perfect temperature). We rented a car for this part of our trip and set out each day towards Arenal, going to the Hot Springs, The Volcano, the Lake, the Hanging Bridges and more. We saw lots of wildlife and had three clear days to view the Volcano exploding. The hotel staff and Jim the owner who I met while using my laptop in the reception area, were helpful, friendly and interesting. My eldest son loved the Chuletas (porkchops) and the adults really enjoyed the tipico platter. I really wouldn't change a thing about the Tilajari. We had an exceptional time. One thing, I would not go to the Tabacon Hot Springs again. It was not kid friendly, and was crowded. While beautifully designed, for the $180 they charged my family for our time there, I would have rather hiked into the natural hot springs area and spent the money on something else. The "leatherette set" was there in droves and it just didn't appeal to us. We blogged about our trip at www.funtripswithkids.com .

“Corporate appearance”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

This resort could belong to any of the chains. I don't mean that in a bad way, just that it looks very corporate and standardized. We actually enjoyed this bit of what was luxury for us in the middle of our trip.

We rejuvinated in the a/c in a very comfortable bed, watched a Turner Classic Movie on TV, took long, hot showers, sat on our balcony overlooking the river watching the birds as they started their day at 5:30am, walked the grounds to see the iguanas, squirrels, and birds.

We enjoyed the open air restaurant (we had to ask to have our ceiling fan restarted one evening), but had to be persuasive to be seated along the perimeter where the groups sit rather than up front (away from the birds). We found the staff very attentive and helpful, just a bit overwhelmed the night the tour groups were ordering off the menu. We then checked the board to see what the group's dinnertime was for the next night to avoid.

The breakfast buffet was great. The dinner food was good quality, but dishes varied in their taste and when an item was ordered two nights in a row it was totally different each time. Especially good were the cream of tomato soup and chicken entrees. The fish was salty (not by nature) and the sauce was better than the entree.

Front desk staff and drivers helpful.

“Gret place”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

Spouse and I and 36 others spent 2 nights as part of tour group. Room was a suite with sitting room. Food and service and grounds were all good. I walked all over the property - all positive except butterfly garden was in disrepair when we visited. Met with owner, Jim Hamilton, told us the history of how the land was a cattle ranch then a private sports club and then a hotel.

Several tour groups were at site first day and dinner was crowded and done as a buffet. Next night with less people we ate directly from menu and food and ambiance was great. Grounds immaculately landscaped . Pool, jacuzzi very nice . Good value, good place. Recommend it.

“Where should I start!”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

Date January 2008

Where do I start? Tilajari is wonderful the word perfect even comes to mind and I’m a Professional photographer and Designer that has products in every Lowes and Home depot in the U.S. so I know nice when I see it! I would have never found this hidden gem on my own so thank you Brad Butler of Emerald Forest Properties for recommending it. Imagine the Garden of Eden with great rooms a pool to die for and a hot tub! Don’t worry if you don’t know Spanish most of the folks here speak very good English.

This part of Costa Rica is much cooler than the coast and has more flowers than you can count. Tilajari is the best vacation spot you could ever hope to spend time at. The staff is friendly and more than willing to help. Roy Villalobos the Recepcionista at the front desk could always tell us how or where to get what we want. These folks know how to treat you. Their Katira restaurant is top notch too the food is as good as anyone could hope for and far less than half the price you would pay for this quality in the States. On top of that add a first class free hot breakfast. This would be the perfect place for weddings the gardens are a great back drop for the photographs! If you like plants and nature this is a must see place, Orchids in the trees everywhere with more exotic plants than you could name. If you’re a bird watcher this place will be heaven for you. You can eat your breakfast while watching some of the most colorful birds in the world we watched a beautiful Red legged honey creeper eat a banana while I got awesome photos because he was so close I could almost touch him! The wait staff in the restaurant put food out every morning for the birds and do they ever come in to get it! This place gets Five stars from me to say the least!

I've attached some of the photos I made.

AC Pickard

Senior Designer

“Tilajari tours”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

We stayed four nights at the Tilajari. The excellent: very friendly desk staff and restaurant personnel, superb tour guides and drivers (Humberto and Marcelo), well-maintained grounds with ample flowering trees and bushes and iguanas and birds galore, and a small but well-stocked butterfly garden.

The good: restaurant food and tours. Because of the distance of the resort from La Fortuna or other cities, eating elsewhere is difficult. Fortunately, the breakfast buffet and dinner menu were on the whole varied and reasonably priced.

The hotel also offers a large number of tours. We took the safari tour (river rafting and visit to local farm), hanging bridges (walking on bridges through a tropical forest), zip lines with horseback riding, visit to the waterfalls, and volcano/hot springs package. The safari tour was our favorite. Seeing native crocodiles, howler monkeys, sloths, and poison dart frogs along the river was quite interesting. The horseback rides were more (pleasantly) challenging that we expected and the zip lines were hair-raising but exhilarating.

The waterfalls were quite pretty, though the trek up and down the stairs to the pools at the base of the falls may be a challenge for some. The walking bridges were interesting, with some very pretty views. The volcano/hot springs package was OK. As happens often, the volcano was shrouded in clouds, making it difficult to see much of the lava flowing down one side. On the other hand, the private hot springs that we visited is much nicer than larger, more public ones. Note that the average price for most of the tours was $50-60 per person.

The could be better: the rooms. They were small and the couches were threadbare. Moreover, the loft portion of our room was open to the elements except for a mesh screen, thus making it impossible to cool with air conditioning.

On the whole, the Tilajari offers an very good base from which to explore the Arenal region of Costa Rica.

“Fabulous experience”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

My family stayed for 6 nights at the Tilajari Resort. We have only wonderful things to say about our experience, the staff, and the facilities.

The resort is lovely and the grounds are lush with beautiful flora, colorful birds and omnipresent iguanas. There is a wonderful butterfly garden as well. The rooms are spacious and clean, and the swimming pool, whirlpool, and tennis courts are great.

As we did not rent a car and there was no town to walk into, we had to rely on the hotel resaurant for most of our meals. We were pleasantly surprised to find the food excellent and the wait service friendly and solicitous.

The friendly and helpful staff, in particular Roy and Uriel, arranged some wonderful sightseeing adventures for us. Our guide Umberto was very informative and charming. The only thing we would probably have done differently in retrospect would be to either have rented a car (though the road are quite challenging for a novice), or stayed fewer nights in one place.

“Fabulous Staff at Tilajari”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

We stayed at Tilajari from Dec. 26 - 28. This hotel has an exceptionally nice and capable staff! We are extremely impressed. We made arrangements with the hotel to be picked up in San Jose. Umberto picked us up and was an absolutely delightful guide as he drove us to Tilajari. He speaks flawless english and is a wealth of knowledge. Umberto led the safari tour (do not miss this) and was assisted by easy going Pedro. Umberto also led the volcano and hot springs tour (also good) and Marcel, a superb driver, - drove us to the Arenal Volcano and also returned us to San Jose. These three people demonstrate the commitment to service and courtesy that Tilajari provides. We highly recommend Tilajar - incredibly nice folks!

“Great CR rainforest resort”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

We, family of 8, five adults and two children, ages 7 and 5, stayed at Tilajari on nights of 26, 27 and 28 December. Rooms (Junior Suites) and grounds were beautiful. Main dining room has open arches for great wildlife viewing while dining. Food, staff and service was excellent. This rain forest setting gave us nice contrast to the Pacific coast (Hotel Playa Hermosa) where we also stayed on this trip...both locations were outstanding. Activities were reasonably priced and guides were very professional. I highly recommend.

“Nice rooms and grounds”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

for 2 nights as part of a tour of Costa Rica. The hotel certainly exceeded our expectations and don’t be deterred that it is about a 30 minute drive from the Arenal area.

Room – Large and clean. We had a room with a nice balcony overlooking the river, very peaceful.

Food – Nice buffet breakfast and a good lunch/dinner menu at fair prices. Wait staff was excellent.

Grounds - Very nice selection of exotic plants. The pool and hot tub were very nice and definitely do check out the butterfly garden, it was quite interesting

“Best nature hotel we visited in Costa Rica - TONS of birds and animals!”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

Tilajari has the worlds worst website -- it looks like a convention center. We were reluctant to book it, but the agent knew the hotel. I am so happy she sent us there! The nature around the hotel - iguanas and monkeys, birds from toucans to tiny honeycreepers -- and that was only during breakfast. And the service, and staff, were amazing. The rooms were really comfortable, the surroundings quiet (unlike most of the places we stayed). Just 25 minutes from teh Arenal volcano (you can see the volcano from in front of the hotel). Great place, and still a secret in Costa Rica.

“Beautiful Grounds, Decent Rooms, Adequate Food Near Arenal Volcano”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

Stayed here recently for two nights as part of a group tour. It is in a great location close to Arenal Volcano and a bunch of outdoor activities. On the banks of the San Carlos river, the Lodge is set on 20 or so acres of nicely manicured grounds loaded with exotic birds, iguanas and other interesting beasties of the tropics. There is a soccer field, pool, hot tub, and a butterfly house in a state of semi-disrepair.

The Lodge is a fairly basic 2.5-star motel affair with several 2-story buildings stretched out for several hundred yards along the river. The rooms are large and each has two queen-sized beds. The floors are tiled and the bathrooms are shower-stalls only. There is little TV reception and no internet to speak of. If you are in need of laundry service, their prices are very reasonable when compared to most hotels.

The restaurant/bar is near the main building and the pool. They try hard, but their reach exceeds their grasp. Breakfast and anything else served buffet style tends to be decent enough. But as soon as you start ordering from their menu, watch out! The food quality ranges from mediocre to slightly above average, but the service is inept and the pace can be downright glacial. But they are so friendly that it's hard to get to get your nose too far out of joint about their shortcomings. Wine and other bar drinks are reasonably priced (and available poolside). Also you'll want to apply insect repellent before coming to the dining room as it is open to the outside and you could become the meal.

All in all, I would gladly stay here again were I to be traveling in the area.

“A Super Family Vacation Spot”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

As a family consisting of two grandparents, a mother, father, and four children from ages 5 to 17, we all found Tilajari a great vacation spot to spend a week. The rooms are spacious and can easily handle a family of four. The furnished breakfasts were excellent as were the other meals available in the restaurant. The lazy river cruises were a great way to see the flora & fauna of a rainforest. We saw coati-mundi, tree sloths, iguani, crocodiles, howler monkeys, macaws, and many other tropical birds.

The kids had fun on the white water raft trips, horseback rides, the ziplines thru the forest, the suspended bridges above the forest canopy, and everyone enjoyed the gorgeous Tilajari swimming pool. It is a beautful country and as a final selling point, our 17 year old (who is very difficult to please) is ready to move there.

“For sure a 4-Star Resort”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

If one is wanting to experience all of Costa Rica, then I highly recommend a few days stay at Tilajari along with a few days at a beach hotel. (If one is looking for a small beach hotel, consider their sister hotel - Hotel Playa Hermosa in Guanacaste).

One can certainly enjoy 7 days at Tilajari as they have many day-tours. Because the resort is so large and most people spend the day-light times on tours, at times if felt like there were few people staying at the resort even though it was full the time I was staying there over Easter. I enjoyed the hot springs at Arenal Volcano, the leisurely river float trip, and horse-back riding to a nearby jungle walk tour. Gee were some of these trees impressive. See attached photos.

Yes there are many hotels surrounding the Arenal Volcano which is about 20 miles from Tilajari. But here 4 reasons why Tilajari can be a better experience:

1) Tilajari sits on at least 20+ acres of FLAT ground all nicely decorated with trees, flowers, shrubs. Most hotels near the volcano are on very hilly & rocky ground with small gardens. Surely not good for very young & older tourists or the handicapped.

2) The resort has 5 tennis courts (2 that are covered should it rain) and 1 basketball court, 1 soccer field with lights; pool tables, ping pong table. Other hotels don't offer these activities.

3) Far enough away from the volcano, which is active, should it ever explode, yet near enough to easily drive to should one wish to spend the day exploring the volcano or fishing in Lake Arenal. Obviously the hotels at the base of the volcano would put one's life in perl should it explode.

4) It's far enough away from the volcano so it rains less and slightly warmer temperature than the hotels at the base of the volcano.

“Beautiful and Relaxing”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

Tilajari is beautiful and serene. The accomodations were excellent. The food was great and there are a lot of adventures to take nearby - such as horseback riding to the jungle, relaxing in the hot springs and a stream ride down the river.

My children loved the butterfly room on the property and really enjoyed the pools and hot tub. The monkeys were fun to watch too.

We highly recommend this resort.

Enjoy!

Kelli Fusaro

“Comfortable Stay - Beautiful Grounds - Help with Activities”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

We visited Costa Rica for the first time with our boys (12 & 20 yrs old). We looked at lots of places and possibilities and decided to try staying in one place and seeing as much as possible from that base location. This hotel was perfect for that. The only thing we missed in this trip was seeing either the Pacific or the Caribbean coasts. The hotel helped us with booking every activity we wanted. They were extremely helpful, both prior to the trip via e-mail and once we got there. Our trip was, I think, more enjoyable and relaxing because we weren't constantly packing and moving as is required with some of the "tour" packages of the country. The hotel staff functioned as "tour guides" for whatever we wanted to do.

We went horseback riding, white water rafting, hiking, took ATV tour in the wild, viewed Arenal volcano at night, swam in hot springs off of volcano, went zip-lining (canopy tour), and took river rafting trip to look at wildlife. It was all extremely beautiful and lots of fun.

We loved the birds around the property. Our waiter brought us a bird fact book each evening to borrow so we could identify what we were seeing. He was an avid birder as well, so he was constantly pointing out interesting specimens as they flew in for food.

We had a couple of the same guides several times during the week for different activities and they were just the best. They were so forthcoming with information about their country and its natural habitat.

The rooms were comfortable - had both hot water and a/c. The restaurant food was really good - lots of fresh fruit and fish. The property was in a beautiful setting as well.

Great trip, lovely people, great hotel!

“bird-watching for breakfast”

Tilajari Resort Hotel

The grounds are lovely, but the nicest surprise was the "bird feeders" perched outside the dining room during breakfast. These bare "trees" were strung with papaya rings, and attracted dozens of birds and squirrels. Since the dining room is open-air, we could watch them at close range, snapping plenty of photos. We saw a beautiful display of all colors of birds!

Typically, we stay in bungalows or cabanas, so we were wary of staying in a "regular" hotel. However, it was pleasant. Our room was spacious, with a very nice bathroom and a balcony overlooking the grounds and the river. The only complaint was that, since it was not as secluded as a bungalow, we heard a lot of noise from people walking past.

We don't usually have TV, phones or hairdryers in bungalows, so it was a luxury to have them here --- unfortunately, the TV remote didn't work. But with so much to see and do, who needs TV?!

It was a bit farther from La Fortuna than we anticipated, and it seemed like all the activities we wanted to do were the opposite direction from La Fortuna, but paved roads made the drive quick, and we enjoyed driving through the farmland.

The staff was extremely polite and helped us book a zipline tour.

We really loved La Fortuna, returning there again and again. There was also a lot to do in the area, from zip lines and hanging bridges to hot springs, shopping and more.

We usually stick close to beaches, but this was a very welcome and pleasing surprise.