It was our first contact with the rain forest-and is was great. Although we stayed in Costa Rica for three weeks at all-we remembered all the time the Lagarto Lodge with its beautiful style.
Situated calm on the top of a small hill, you can watch a lot of birds as tucans, montezumas,
parrots, hummingbirds, woodpickers.....
Don´t miss the jungle tours with the lovely and helpful guys !
The rooms are simple, but clean and breakfast and dinner excellent.
Next time again!!

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