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We work with many local community organizations. We are active members on the Community Association and contribute to all fundraising activities including sponsoring soccer games, community festivals and other community activities. We encourage our guests to attend these activities as well and they love the real Costa Rican community experience – especially the bull riding! We host student groups that complete service-learning projects in the town.
We work with many community partners to provide ecotourism activities to our guests. All of the day tours that we offer benefit local businesses - we work with local nature guides, restaurants and farmers to provide interesting activities for our guests to participate in while supporting our local economy. In our community, we rent horses from a local rancher who is our horseback riding guide, a family invites guests into their home to share a meal together and our visitors can go to a local dairy farm to learn to make cheese – from milking cows to tasting the final product! A short drive away visitors can go with local guides on canopy tours, to relax in hot springs and hike volcanoes.
Our energy comes from a combination of renewable sources in our area. The geothermal plant, which uses geothermal energy from the Miravalles Volcano, provides most of our power. Newly installed wind turbines that tourists will see on their drive up to the ranch also contribute to our electricity.
Our vegetable garden is maintained organically – free of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. We maintain a large compost system to recycle kitchen scraps and provide an organic fertilizer for our garden. We greatly encourage wildlife in our garden and around our plantation as one of our goals is to maintain and increase the biodiversity of rainforest species in the area. We plant ornamental bananas to encourage toucans and other large birds to visit and special flowers that attract a wide variety of hummingbird species. Since we are a sustainable working farm, bees, birds and other pollinators abound.
We contribute to local forest conservation programs to incorporate additional land into the Costa Rican National Park System. Additionally, we have left 1/3 of our plantation land for re-growth into primary rainforest. We have a trail system so guests can visit this area and see the regeneration project. We encourage our guests to contribute to international rainforest conservation programs.
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