Welcome to Rancho Armadillo :: Playas del Coco, Costa Rica

Week at Rancho Armadillo up for Auction
A week's stay at Rancho Armadillo Estate is up for auction. The online auction is for the benefit of " For The Seventh Generation", offering non law related services to abused and neglected children who are wards of the court in Wayne County, Michigan, These services cover such items as art classes & dental work, services that will help the children succeed in life. This is a very worthy cause so bid high.

Rancho Armadillo has been Chosen as One of the Top Honeymoons Destinations in the Most Popular Tourist Area of Costa Rica by Brides Magazine!!

We were featured in the Sweet Spots Section of the July/August 2007edition of Brides magazine as one of (if not the) best honeymoon destinations in Costa Rica. So whether it's your first, second or third honeymoon - stay at Rancho Armadillo and see why we are the #1 choice of all the major Guide Books, Trip Advisor and now Brides Magazine (We also do great destination weddings).

"Low key couples who want a more authentic atmosphere choose centrally located inns like Rancho Armadillo, a Spanish-style estate, where the owner welcomes guests like family by dictating down to the mile marker directions to secret waterfalls, Places like this remind you that, despite the buzz, Costa Rica will never be a high-rise mecca. You can still find a hammock where the only sound will be a breeze rustling the trees. And if you listen closely, a howler monkey's screech. "
Lexi Dwyer - Brides

"SLEEPING WITH THE TOUCANS: 100 GREAT PLACES TO STAY IN COSTA RICA"
featuring Rancho Armadillo as one of the 100 great places to stay in Costa Rica . The guide book is available from internet booksellers (Amazon.com, etc) and from major bookstores in the U.S. For information and for ordering the book please contact the publishers at: www.sleepingwiththetoucans.com

Last November Playas del Coco finally received high speed internet service so we installed wireless internet connection so that our guests can check their flight status, hotel reservations and mom's & dad's can keep tabs on the kids while they enjoy their second honeymoon. Some guests might even be tempted to check their work emails, but mixing up a batch of pina coladas usually quashes that temptation. No need to bring your lap top, we purchased a new HP lap top for our guests to use not only for the internet but also to down load pictures onto CD's or send pictures of the great time they are having in Paradise to all their friends. We are now hooked up with SKYPE, the internet VIOP phone service, so now our guests can make & receive international phone calls for free.

We have a membership to the Papagayo Gulf and Country Club just outside of Sardinal, about 10 minutes from here. The newly completed 18 hole course is set among rolling hills with views of 3 volcanoes. Hazards include howler monkeys loudly commenting on your swing and the occasional iguana sunning himself on the green.

For guests at Rancho Armadillo 18 holes with cart & club rental will cost $50 per person. Considering 18 holes at the Four Seasons runs $250, Pinilla $175 and at Conchal $225, this is a great deal. Tennis courts are to be added in the near future.

In conjunction with Projecto de Luz, Rancho Armadillo with a generous donation from a guest who wishes to remain anonymous, has purchased complete uniforms and equipment for the first Coco Elementary School girls soccer team. There is no Title IX in Costa Rica and the girls are often left on the sidelines when it comes to extracurricular activities. Having raised 2 daughters who participated in sports as children and one receiving a full scholarship to college under Title IX for soccer. I realize the importance of learning team work at an early age. The girls first game came at a 2 day tournament sponsored by Projecto de Luz in conjunction with the annual Sandfest / beach clean-up festivities. The participants at the tournament were local area schools from Filadelfia, Guardia and Paso Tempisque. The 1st round had the girls playing Paso Tempisque and not only did they look good but they shut out Paso Tempisque 5-0. The following day they played Filadelfia for the championship of the Canton. The girls were the underdogs against the much larger school but once again dominated the filed and shut out the favorite 4 -0. Not only were they the best looking team but they are now champions of the Canton Filadelfia in the Province of Guanacaste. Not bad for their first team effort.

Donated soccer balls
Thanks to 2 of our guests, Aida & Johnny Shirley, The Coco School now has 3 brand new NIKE soccer game balls

A Special Thanks to
Brams United Girls Soccer Club of
Brampton, Ontario

First time guest Christina MacLean coordinated through a local Ontario girls soccer club to donate 22 complete soccer uniforms and soccer balls.

The dry season is here and although we experienced some unusual rains in February, the rains have disappeared along with the lush tropical foliage. October brought devastating rain to our area, thankfully there were no deaths, but this area saw extensive flooding, calling for the evacuation of hundreds of families. The town of Filadelfia suffered the most damage. For those who have been here before you will recall the bridge over the Tempisque River you have to cross to get to Coco. It is the bridge near the Do-It-Center and the road to the Four Seasons. Normally the river is a good 100 feet below the bridge. On October 15th the river covered the bridge. The picture was taken about an hour before the bridge was submerged. Note the huge concrete slabs being lifted to almost a 45 degree angle.

Proyecto de Luz (Project of Light), the local charity that Debbie works with, is always looking for donations of either money or school items. If you would like to contribute please contact us. We will be happy to let you know what is needed. Currently we are looking to fund another girls soccer team, this will be for the 4th & 5th grade boys. The cost to purchase the uniforms, shoes and balls is around $2,500. We will gladly accept donation on behalf of Proyecto de Luz. The average cost of sponsoring a child in the public school is $260, this covers books, supplies and uniforms. This cost is prohibitive for many family's, without uniforms the children cannot attend school. This past February, as the school children returned from their summer vacation, Proyecto de Luz, passed out 65 uniforms and over $4,000 worth of supplies for the children and for the teachers. The Coco Club is passing out piggy banks to business's and hotels around town for tourists to get rid of their loose change. Donations - large or small are needed and welcomed. There is so much we can do to improve the educational lives of these children, but funds are limited. Please help us out.

We are now in the 21st century when it comes to pool side entertainment. We recently purchased an Apple iPOD and loaded it up with over 7,000 songs covering almost every musical taste (we still won't allow Rap or Hip-Hop) So if you have an iPOD feel free to bring it along with you.

In March we were quite busy. Eric & Kristen Hietella exchanged vows and started a new life as husband & wife. Eric & Kristen are long time guests and friends. Their wedding party came from El Salvador, California & Nevada. The randall family had a reunion to celebrate their Parents 60th wedding anniversary. We had guests from as far away as England, Norway, California, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania & Oregon and as close as San Jose and La Fortuna Costa Rica..

We had our pool water tested and the results were spectacular! Our pool water is cleaner than the Crystal brand bottled water sold here in Costa Rica. We use the ionizing method of cleaning our water and have cut the chlorine level to less than 1/8 of the chlorine that is generally used in a pool our size.

A must do favorite of all of our guests is The Congo Trail Canopy Tour, one of the original canopy tours in Costa Rica, about a 20 minute drive from here. You have to understand that canopy tours are intended as an amusement ride not a study in nature, but that does not mean that you won't be able to view nature in it's purist form. We recommend that our guests go in the late afternoon, leaving here around 3:30, that way you will have missed all of the tour busses and you stand a great chance of being in the trees with monkeys, as they travel though there on their way to bed down for the night. The tour has 11 platforms and has one line that is 800 yards long. After the tour stop by and visit the Congo Trail serpent display, containing a variety of snakes and frogs local to the area. After a visit with the snakes you can easily convince the guides to let you play with the resident white face and howler monkeys. The monkeys can get a bit inquisitive, searching pockets, purses and even climbing down your shirt. Guests of Rancho Armadillo pay only $25 for the tour instead of the normal $35, a bargain considering most other canopy tours run from $45 to $85. Having been on over 15 canopy tours around Costa Rica, this is definitely one of the best, the guides are the key that makes it one of the best.

We have a new water tour that our guests have given a big thumbs up to. The tour boat Almaco is a 27ft, 8 passenger custom designed skiff with a quiet 4 stroke engines that

will take you to secluded beaches quickly & comfortably. They will customize the tour to fit your needs. One of the owners is Miguel, who spent 3 years as the master diver for the Cocos Island tours (Cocos Island is about 150 miles off the coast of Costa Rica and is considered the best dive area in the world). Miguel and his partner Lawson offer complete diving packages, snorkeling, reef fishing, water skiing and tubing. They will even include a gourmet beach BBQ complete with linens, china and silverware. They will even provide you with an edited DVD of your day in the sun.The tours are private, meaning you and yours will be the only ones on the boat.

The next time you see the new Toyota commercial on TV, the one featuring a group of guys standing around a waterfall, take a closer look, it was filmed here in Costa Rica at the Bagaces waterfall, one of our favorite tours. The waterfall is 60 ft high and 40 ft wide and empties into a white sand pool around 5 ft deep. Diving from the top of the waterfall as seen in the commercial is not recommended.

This tour is combined with a trip to the oldest wild cat rescue center in Costa Rica and an optional river float trip down the Corobice river to see crocs, monkeys and lots of birds.

We have recently added a new horseback riding tour to our list of "non touristy" tours.

and our guests love it. We used to send our guests to the Hacienda Innocentes for horseback riding, but they have doubled their rate to $65 per person, a price not justified by what they have to offer. This tour will take small groups to hidden waterfalls and natural springs, up mountain trails for some incredible vistas. At the end of the trail you will be invited into the home of the owners for some Costa Rican coffee & homemade tortilla's with homemade cheese, giving you a glimpse of Costa Rican ranch life.

We combine the new tour with stops at the indigenous village of Guatil to observe pottery making by the ancestors of the Chortega's, who still make pottery as they have for hundreds of years. After a stop at Guital you then head for a Tortilla Factory, run by the local women, for an incredible (and cheap) lunch.

First you head out for a 45 minute drive to just south of Santa Cruz, where you will embark on a 3 hour horseback ride up the mountains to waterfalls, natural springs and incredible views. Along the way you may encounter whiteface & howler monkeys, sloth's, birds, butterflies and incredible flora. After experiencing Costa Rican hospitality you head back to the village of Guatil, where you can observe the artisans making, shaping, painting and glazing the world famous Guatil pottery. They have co-ops where you can purchase the individually signed pieces.
Then it's of to the city of Santa Cruz, folklore capitol of Guanacaste, for lunch at a tortilla factory founded by the local women for a very typical Tico lunch. The cost of this tour is $25 per person for the horseback ride, $2 for the lunch and whatever you decide to spend at Guatil. Most of our tours are self guided tours, we supply a detailed map and directions, or we can arrange for a private guide to transport you.

Even though it has been here for thousands of years it's new to us. We recently visited the area near the Miravalles Volcano. More specifically the Hornillas Crater, about a 1 & 1/2 hour drive from here. This crater is unique in the world, it is an active crater on the side of the 5000 meter high volcano featuring boiling mud pits, emerald green springs and fumaroles that emit steam and other gases. Here you can follow a path that will allow you to get up close and personal with these natural wonders.

At one spot along the way you can stop and actually hear the "heartbeat" of the volcano.

After the short hike you sit in a natural sauna and get your pores open before you lather yourself up with the mud from the mud pits, once the mud has dried you shower it off in a hot shower with water taken directly from the boiling hot springs. Makes your skin feel 10 years younger. Then relax in any of the three hot spring pools.

Rancho Armadillo Estate is pleased to announce that we are members of Adventure Hotels of Costa Rica a group of small and medium sized hotels located throughout Costa Rica. Although we have not been to all of the hotels in the association we are confident that all meet the standards that were required. As you plan your vacation to Costa Rica please check out the web sites of the following hotels and consider staying with them. All of the hotels are required to offer an additional 10% discount if you mention that you were referred to them by a member of Adventure Hotels of Costa Rica.

By order of the Health Department - Hotel Allegro Papagayo Closed, 5 more business's in Tamarindo also closed.

Two "flag ship" 5 star hotels belonging to the Spanish based Occidental Hotel chain, Allegro & Grand Papagayo, are finally getting what they deserved. it has taken over a year to get the government to act but after the local press made it a front page issue, they acted relatively quickly. Both of these hotels have been for years dumping their raw sewage in the the estuaries that feed into the Gulf of Papagayo up near Playa Panama and the Four Seasons Hotel. They actually went to great lengths to hide the sewage pipes that fed into the estuaries. In August the government ordered the Allegro to build a new sewage treatment plant, instead they were sending over 100 sewage trucks a day out to dump there toxic loads in fields, rivers or anywhere they could. Both of these hotels are on concession properties, property owned by the government and leased for the purpose of tourism to the company. There is talk of the government revoking the concession and finding new concessionaires to operate these hotels. Although we think the government will fold under the pressure of the companies and the Spanish government and allow the hotels to continue to operate, revoking the concession will send a clear message to all that the environment comes first. This combined with the 11 hotels and businesses previously closed in Tamarindo and 5 more this month, for the same offence (65 other businesses and hotels were sited in Tamarindo and ordered to clean up their act) Has finally put the spotlight on the unregulated overdevelopement that is ruining the eco tourism that Costa Rica is so proud to promote. The government tends to act slowly (if at all) hoping to avoid the publicity and caving into the money these large projects generate. An investor in a project in Hermosa recently had second thoughts (and maybe a guilty conscience) and filed suit against the other investors and the developers who uncovered a ancient burial ground with pottery and artifacts, but instead of reporting it and allowing archeologists to excavate the area they just bulldozed over it, destroying the history and heritage of the Costa Rican people - out of greed - pure and simple. It's not they they could not build there, it's that it would have delayed the project for 6 months at the most. Hopefully as more of these atrocities come to light there will be more government and public pressure to halt these practices and make it financially detrimental to these greedy individuals and companies.

I want to preface the follow article with the fact hat we do not sell real estate and that the following is for the sole purpose to help our guests not have their dream of owning a piece of paradise become become a nightmare in hell.

Many of the first time tourists are so impressed with what this area has to offer that real estate sales are booming with property values increasing monthly. Playa's Coco, Hermosa, Panama and Ocotal are at the center of this boom. Owning property in Costa Rica is greatly enhanced by the fact that foreign land owners enjoy the same rights as Costa Rica citizens. To say that this area is experiencing a building boom would be an understatement. Unregulated building by unscrupulous developers and sales by greedy real estate agents is causing tremendous stress on the infrastructures and the fragile environment.

The Tamarindo area was already having problems with polluted wells, leaching septic fields ( the estuary that used to contain crocodiles, fish and water fowl is now practically lifeless & the beach front is so polluted that cases of e-coli poisoning are now common), has been ordered by the government to construct a waste treatment plant and all property owners must hook up to it, property owners there can expect huge assessments to their property to pay for this. In May '05 the Tamarindo businesses and residents were informed that now they have to contend with water rationing, there will be no water available from 10 pm to 4 am to allow the aquifer time to replenish. Water is now being trucked in to many of the hotels. In August 2007 the local health department tested Tamarindo's beach front and the results were disgusting, some areas had over 3 million parts per milliliter of coliform bacteria. (400 parts per milliliter is considered safe!) In january the Health Department closed 11 business's and cited 65 others for dumping raw sewage or having inefficient septic tanks.

Playa Hermosa, just north of Coco sits on a small aquifer, but that hasn't stopped the developers from tearing up the mountain sides for huge developments. Currently Hermosa has 750 lots requesting water hook - ups and more than 350 projects in the planning including 3 beach front high rise condo projects. The government has put a stop on any new wells and announced a minimum of a 4- 6 month moratorium on water hook ups while they do a study to see what can be done, not good news to the people who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for lots they may never be able to build on or will have to go to the expense of having to build a water pipe line from elsewhere in the country to carry water to the area. Guaranteed you will not be told this by the developers or the real estate agents. The local residents group has successfully stopped 4 large projects from continuing based on lack of proper permits and or no water. If you would like to receive updates on the Playa Hermosa Resident group "HAG" please contact them at
hagme2@gmail.com

The government has completed a study on water in Playas del Coco and it has been determined that Coco sits on a very large aquifer and has sufficient water to sustain development. Although it will be years before some of the outlying area's of Coco will have water hook ups. A water pipe line from Sardinal has been approved for Coco but again it is years from being a reality.

When looking for property in Costa Rica is very important note that real estate agents are not licensed and are self regulated, there are good ones out there but you have to look hard for them. When it comes to the closing you will need to have a good local attorney. We will be happy to recommend some trustworthy real estate agents and a good attorney to our guests who are interested in purchasing property. Whether you are looking for beach front, ocean view, golf course lots, condo's, homes or investment property we can help you buy smart and avoid the pitfalls.

There are many things to consider when looking for property, the main item would be availability of potable water, but there are other considerations, case in point a development near the beach front between Coco and Ocotal failed to apply for the necessary permits and failed to do an environmental impact study. While cutting the building pads they failed to take into consideration the water run off during the rainy season and completely destroyed the beach in front of the properties. The government came in and closed down the project and filed criminal complaints against the developers. This action by the government effectively shut down the development for a minimum of the next 5 years and possibly permanently, yet the developers are still selling the lots ($450,000 per lot) with out informing the buyers of this. Real estate agents will not volunteer this information, they want their commissions, so it is incumbent for prospective property buyers to do due diligence. Another Real Estate office is well known for not submitting the initial ( and sometimes second) offer to purchase to the seller, they just reject it out right so that their commission is not reduced by a lower purchase price. Greed is the motivating factor with most of the real estate "agents & brokers" in this area.

I recently had some investors stay here with the expressed purpose of buying a large property for an eco-development project. They had made some internet inquiries/appointments. In Tamarindo they were told that the water problem was just hype to sell newspapers, an agent in Samara described a beautiful piece of property and when they got there they had to ride horseback for 2 hours just to get to it, an agent in Hermosa told them they could dig their own wells, ect ect. Unscrupulous & greedy is the best way to describe the majority of real estate agent in Costa Rica

Recently one of my part time employees came to me and wanted to know if I could help him sell his mother's property. I have introduced him to some guests allowing him to show them the property. Since then I have had other locals coming to me with the same idea. The older locals have been ripped off by real estate agents so bad the next generation just won't deal with them and they are content to just wait until one of our guests wants to buy from them. I have one person with over 12,000 acres, all ocean view with 5 beaches who has recently approached me. I am not in the real estate business but I will be happy to introduce interested guests to these people. I will also recommend trust worthy real estate agents ( actually there are only 2 in the area we would trust) and a good bi- lingual attorney. Armed with this information you will be able to purchase your piece of paradise.

The Staff at Rancho Armadillo Estate
Debbie, Rick, Marisol, Melissa, Teo, Minor, Arnoldo & Mongo