We stayed here to save money on our last night in Santa Elena, after staying 2 nights at the most expensive place in town (El Establo). To be honest, I enjoyed my stay here even more. Very friendly staff, a clean comfortable room, and great cats and dogs who welcome you on arrival, but stay out of your way (actually, one cat really wanted to hang out in our room, but we're apparently not allowed to let them in, so we only let here stay for a few minutes!).

Very quiet, even though it's in the downtown area. And the owner spent about 1/2 hour helping me find a palce to stay on the coast for later on in our trip.

A great experience. I would certainly stay here again, if we come back to the area.

We just returned from an 8-day stay in Costa Rica, including one night at the Arco Iris Ecolodge in Santa Elena. We would highly recommend this hotel to all travelers due to its location, cleanliness, and value. We will definitely stay at this hotel again on our next trip to CR.

The hotel did not have any cabins available for our party of 4 (2 adults and 2 16-year old boys), so we were placed in 1 standard room and the smallest cabina. I was concerned about booking a standard room since we wanted to have our own space and not worry about noise from other travelers. However, the standard room was actually a separate and privately located cabin. And the super small cabina had 2 bunk beds just perfect for our teenage boys. The cabins were very nice and spotless - which can't be easy considering all of the rain and constant moisture. Of course the Arco Iris is more of a budget inn - so it wouldn't be the place to stay if you were looking for more upscale amenities. But for $85.00 a night total for both cabins - it definitely exceeded our expectations.

We could easily walk into town for meals, groceries and shopping, but we heard very little road/town noise since the hotel is up a steep hill from the main street. The staff was excellent and very knowledgeable about the available activities and restaurants. And we enjoyed the buffet breakfast - not a lot of choices but everything was very good.

We would highly recommend hiking the Santa Elena reserve (saw a whole troop of spider monkeys and many, many birds), the night hike at Hidden Valley Trail (we had fun even though it was pouring rain), and the Selvatura canopy tour (absolutely thrilling!). It rains A LOT, so be prepared with the proper rain gear so that the weather doesn't prevent you from enjoying a magical place.

One recommendation - we should have planned a 2 night stay in Monteverde/Santa Elena instead of setting out for San Jose after the canopy tour. We left Santa Elena around 4:00 p.m. and had a tortuous 4-hour drive in clouds, rain and darkness in a rental car that was trying hard to fall apart. Whether driving toward Arenal or San Jose, it would be safest to plan your trip so that you always arrive at your destination before sunset.

WOW! I just returned from the Arco Iris and it is the best choice for the Santa Elena/Monteverde area.
Our room was very nice. Basic, but clean and cute.
The Arco Iris is like a 1 minute walk to town but it's on a nice hillside. There are lots of birds and the owner has dogs and cats on the property, they are very nice and cute. Also, her little son. He is extremely cute and runs around in a spiderman mask. The owner is very nice and friendly. They are currently under construction making a new information area and breakfast area.

The breakfast was satisfying, fresh fruit, bread, and more! I ate there since there weren't any other good restaurants in town.... TreeHouse restaurant was recommended but I didn't care for it much.
The lady who works in the office is sooooooooo unbelievably helpful! and very friendly...

It's surprisingly very relaxing to sit on the patio or lawn.

If I were to go to Monteverde again I would stay here in a second, it looked alot nicer than the other hotels I saw. It's well-priced, too! Loved every second of it!

Oh yeah, also on the Monteverde Natural History Walks Adrian was amazing! He found us FOUR quetzals. Don't get your hopes up though! Whenever he heard a bird noise he just put it binocular up and VOILA! It was incredible. He was really nice!

Selvatura walks and canopies was great too. Don't bother going to Aventura. We went there and there were 60 people on on tour! 60 people! And only like 5 guides! At Selvatura there were 10 people in our group and like.... 7 guides! 2 per tree! So we left Aventura, & got our $$$ back. Don't waste your time there!

Twilight tour is nice.
There isn't much to do in Monteverde but I loved it up there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Keep up the nice work, Arco Iris.

We were there in March 06 with some friends. We shared the 2 bedroom house with my cousins and it was a great place to stay as well as a very reasonable price. It was a bonus to be so close to Santa Elena as we could easily walk to shops, ATM, restaurants and the grocery. The nice thing about the location was that while it was close to the town center - it was hidden away and our house looked onto a pasture with beautiful horses. We even saw a quetzal bird in the tree one day!

The staff were ever so helpful making arrangements for us. That alone was worth the price!