We started our 4-weeks holiday with 3 young kids (6, 8 and 11 years) at Laguna de Lagarto. After 3 days we were wondering what could possibly beat our experience at this lodge. And nothing did!
The accomodation was simple, but clean and practical. The hammock was great, with a view on the laguna and the rainforest. We saw many birds already sitting there! We especially liked the tours with the guides from the lodge. Didier and Christian know a lot and showed us many animals (frogs, snakes, birds, monkeys, etc). We felt really welcome at the lodge. The manager and guides were very friendly, really involved and nice to the kids. Our son (6 years) even cried when we left the lodge because he would miss Christian so much!
Food and prices were excellent!

This was by far one of our best stays in Costa Rica, I guess the best! We only stayed there for one night, but the owner Alfonso already made us feel at home at our arrival. Very friendly and hospitable. A lot of things are included in the price, suchs as jungle tours, cayman feeding etc. In the Garden you can see a lot of burds, such as parrots, Tucans and Macaws. Alfonso gave us the next day, the day that we had to go, a nice tour through his garden. He gave as Guabo, which is a very weird, but vert nice fruit!
The rooms were very nice, well kept and comfortable. Very clean, calm and peacefull.
And the food...wow...plenty of food @ dinner time. The nice thing about the whole Laguna Lodge is that Alfonso wants to get the local community be involved in the Lodge, so a lot of locals work there, such as the cook.
Nothing but love for this place, you would be crazy not going there!!

My companion and I visited Laguna Del Lagarto Lodge (LDL), near Boca Tapada in northeastern Costa Rica, from April 1 - 10, 2011. This was my third visit to LDL, her first.
The owner, Kurt Schmack, kindly arranged our transportation to LDL from the San Jose international airport (SJO), a 140 km, 4 hour drive through the Cordillera Central.

As always, the hospitality and lodge ammenities were superb. We stayed in a very reasonably priced, clean, spacious new room overlooking the lagoon at the edge of a 2 ha garden full of orchids, butterflies,Toucans, Oropendplas, Spider Monkeys, to name but a few examples of the diverse inhabitants of the area. The well-marked and maintained trail system was always an adventure, especially for birders and other folks interested in tropical nature. And for nature photography lovers, there is no better place in Central America than LDL.

We highly recommend LDL to anyone willing to spend a few days exploring one of the most remote and fascinating parts of Costa Rica. Further details of our trip can be found at:

http://avconline.avc.edu/cyorke/fieldnotes/CostaRica.html

CY/MM
Santa Clarita, CA USA

We stayed at the Laguna del Lagarto Lodge for two nights and did a boat trip on the river as well as a guided rainforest tour. The rainforest around the lodge is great and can be explored on self-guided tours on many different trails. One guided tour was included in our stay and was definitely worthwhile. Although it was raining heavily, we saw different types of arrow poison frogs, and our guide pointed out some monkey hotspots for us to which we returned later when the rain had stopped. The boat trip was not spectacular, but nice. We landed at a village close to the Nicaraguan border and were not entirely sure what to do there, but we saw some animals on the river.
Service at the lodge was very good - the cooks even prepared special vegan dinners for us! The meals are otherwise buffet style and got a lot of praise from other guests.
The lodge hangs bunches of bananas in front of the porch on which the meals are served to attract a large variety oft birds including toucans, much to the enjoyment of photographers.
Our room was fairly simple, but comfortable and clean. We had a balcony looking over the lagoon with a hammock .
Laguna del Lagarto Lodge almost made five stars for me, but I subtracted one for the following reason: During our stay, we found one frog and two snakes which had been captured and were kept in otherwise empty tupper ware dishes with lids. At least one of the snakes looked somewhat dried up - not that I know much about snakes. We were told they were supposed to be shown to photographers, but when the snakes were still in the dishes when it got dark, we released them (we released the frog upon finding it because it seemed to be trying so hard to climb our of the dish). I think that for an eco-lodge, keeping animals in inadequate containers is not a good practice.
Other than that, I would definitely recommend driving the long distance to the Laguna del Lagarto Lodge, it is worth it.