Two nights at Rafiki Safari Lodge

This place was more than just accommodation and definitely deserves a blog post to itself!

There is a whole page in the Lonely Planet dedicated to Rafiki Safari Lodge, and from the first time I read it I knew this was something I wanted us to splurge on during our stay in Costa Rica.

My Mum was also totally on-board with this plan, so we booked two nights here (which was as much as we could afford to be honest!). This really was a complete treat on our itinerary at £290 per night - a huge £170 a night more than the next most expensive spot on our Costa Rica trip.

NB this was for two safari tents, as we were a group of five, so probably a bit less for a family of four as you would all fit in one tent!

And boy was it worth it. Rafiki organised a private shuttle for us from Manuel Antonio (US$95 for the five of us), which took around an hour in total - most of it on an incredibly uneven, unpaved road that made be VERY glad that we hadn't opted to drive it (more on driving in Costa Rica in a separate post!).

The lodge

Rafiki is based around a huge communal covered deck space, with a bar and kitchen. The views extend for miles across the Savegre river valley and are really spectacular. They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner in this space (breakfast is included, dinner was around US$18-21 per person depending on what you chose from the daily menu). The lodge is miles from anywhere so there isn't really much option but to go for the meals, although we packed enough snack and bread rolls etc to manage without having to buy lunch. 

The food is pretty fab - there was a breakfast buffet on one of the days (when they had a large group in) and a menu to order from on the other morning (when it was just us and one other couple staying). There were eggs, pancakes, rice and beans, toast, cereal, fruit...pretty much everything you could want! The food at dinner was also really, really good - especially the delicious homemade pineapple and chocolate cakes.

On our first night there was a HUGE thunderstorm that went on for hours, and pretty much the heaviest rain imaginable. We ate dinner under the thatched lodge while the thunder boomed and lightning flashed all around us. The lights under the thatched roof has attracted quite a lot of insects, which in turn had drawn in the bats, which swooped all round overhead. We saw red-eyed tree frogs, a giant toad, a glass frog and a pretty big hairy spider on the railings round the edge of the lodge.

To say it was atmospheric would be an understatement!

The rooms

The rooms themselves at Rafiki are safari tents on decked platforms; both of ours overlooked a pond towards the back of the site. They have huge decks with rocking chairs and tables where you can sit and watch the wildlife (and the pouring rain!). 

We spent hours of our stay here watching huge iguanas racing up and down the trees and chasing each other off; we spotted Green Herons hunting by the water's edge and, to my DELIGHT, a basilisk lizard that we watched running on the water. It was like living inside a David Attenborough documentary. At night the place is alive with the sounds of frogs and insects!

The tents were pretty huge inside, with massive bathrooms with hot showers. I'm not going to lie, I love camping but the idea of a bit of canvas being the only thing between us and all the jungle critters had freaked me out a bit before we got there. But nothing appeared to get inside the tents (they are well protected with netting around them) - at least nothing we noticed anyway!

The tents come with fans so are actually quite cool inside. Ours had a double and two singles and there was still plenty of space to move around/unpack.

Lying in the dark under the canvas - with the rain pouring down and the deafening noise of the jungle outside - was magical.

The pool

And the best bit for the boys - from the decked lounge area in the main lodge you can hop on the water slide straight in to the little pool! And this was one fast water slide. We all spent ages going down the slides and being thrown into the water at the bottom. It was a fab spot for cooling off and chilling out.

What else did we do?

The lodge arrange rafting and horse-riding trips, as well as guided jungle tours. As we had burnt so much cash just on our stay, we didn't go for any of these and opted instead to hang out by the pool and take a walk through the jungle trails ourselves. The truth is that it was so sweaty and humid that we all (with possibly the exception of Steve) struggled to hike too far through the jungle! We did do a short trail from the back of the tents where we spotted several different insects (and a pretty big tarantula!).

Much of the rest of the time we spent with our binoculars out watching the wildlife from our room decks and from the lodge - there were endless numbers of birds to spot and identify from the books the lodge provided (including vultures, hummingbirds, tanagers and herons).

In the evenings we hunted for bugs and frogs in the dark around the lodge, enjoyed a few soft drinks from the bar and played a lot of Yahtzee and Exploding Kittens. 

Two nights was about right - definitely from a budgeting perspective but also in terms of things to do at the lodge. We could have done a couple of activities but even then two nights would probably have been enough.

I wanted to make sure our time in Costa Rica included some unique experiences, and sleeping under canvas in the jungle in the middle of nowhere definitely ticked that box! Despite the price tag I would absolutely recommended Rafiki to anyone planning a trip to Costa Rica.