Poas Volcano Lodge — Hotel in Varablanca

This place is amazing! The magnificent lodge is less than an hour from the airport, and the drive itself is an amazing, seemingly never-ending series of switchbacks that climb up the beautiful mountains, with stunning views along the way. Our room was perfect, with a beautiful private garden view through three large windows, and the most spectacular sunset views from another window. The Lodge itself is an incredible architectural masterpiece, with multiple beautiful common spaces to spend time. The restaurant is terrific! We ate breakfast there every day, and had most dinners there as well. It’s an elegant setting, and the food is delicious! The entire staff is friendly, warm, and helpful, and in particular, Javier, the restaurant’s charming, thoughtful host, server, bartender and whatever you needed guy to go to. The farm property the Lodge is nestled in has four great trails of varying degrees of diversity and difficulty, with spectacular views and fun tromps up and down pastures, past friendly cows, and then through dense cloud forests! Because of it’s proximity to the San Jose airport, it would be the perfect place to stay for a few days either on your way in or out of Costa Rica if you’re flying through San Jose. We stayed for our entire trip of 7 days, as there are lots of other interesting and beautiful places to see within an hour or so drive of the Lodge. As you can probably tell from this review, we could not recommend this...

This place is quaint and charming! We stayed at room no. 6 right by the main building. My favorite part was the rustic fireplace. It was so romantic! There was wood at our disposal. They definitely paid attention to details, like the coffee and tea bar in the room, and the plants placed throughout the room added a special touch too. We really enjoyed brewing fresh coffee in the morning. This was by far the best coffee I had in my life (and I grew up drinking coffee in Brazil). The staff were very polite and always there to help. The food was great. They have a couple of hiking trails. We only did the small one due to time limit. Wish we had more time to explore the property and see the animals that live on the farm. They have this cute green house with 2 tables. Inside you will find a room where you can borrow shoes, hiking sticks and ponchos- again- attention to details! We visited Lá Paz waterfalls park and Poas volcano. They were both nearby the lodge by car. We enjoyed both places, but wish the weather was more cooperative as we weren’t able to see the crater of the volcano because of the clouds. Still we were able to read about it and leave with some information on the history of it. There are some really nice views of the fields and mountains from the lodge. This is definitely a place to disconnect from the...

Spent 7 nights here in an upgraded Volcano view room. The view was fantastic when it was not covered in clouds or raining. The deck was nice as well. Good bird watching from our room. We did not have a car so ended up eating at the lodge multiple times. Breakfast was nothing fancy. Eggs multiple ways or pancakes. A bowl of fruit. Coffee and juice. Dinner was okay. And reasonable prices. 20.00 for a steak that was very good. Pasta dishes around 10.00. All the meals were good. No complaints. They do have shuttle services which we used for Poas Volcano and LA Paz. A bit expensive @ 60.00 a trip. 90.00 to take us to the airport. So a car would be advantageous to access sights and restaurants. We hiked all the trails. Unfortunately the longer ones were overgrown with tall grass. No discernable trail at all. You had to really look for the painted signs to guide you. Not much to see but good excessive. The rooms are bare bones ( at least ours was), no mini- fridge, a small heater, no A/ C, no phone, no T.V., the Wi- Fi was not very good. It would go in/ out constantly. The lodge itself has no heat. Except for about 3- 4 small wood stoves that did very little to add any warmth to the building. Bring a jacket, sweater or ??? Because it was cold inside the lodge and room. Beautiful country full of Dairy cows and...