Hacienda AltaGracia

In the Pérez Zeledón region of Costa Rica’s South Pacific zone, Hacienda AltaGracia occupies a former coffee hacienda of 360 hectares in the Savegre River valley, surrounded by oak forest, coffee plantations, and the extraordinary birdlife of one of Central America’s most productive avian habitats. The 50 casitas are designed in the hacienda architectural tradition of the Central American highlands — thick walls, terracotta tile roofs, and deep verandahs — with interiors that use local wood, handwoven textiles, and artisan ironwork from the Pérez Zeledón region. The hacienda’s working coffee farm, whose certified organic crop is processed in the estate’s own mill and served through the morning coffee programme, gives the property an agricultural character unusual in the luxury lodge landscape.

The Resguardo wellness centre draws on pre-Columbian healing traditions of the Chirripó indigenous communities, with plant medicine consultations, sweat lodge ceremonies, and ceremonial cacao treatments offered alongside conventional spa therapies. Horseback riding through the coffee and forest landscape, guided birding in the Savegre Valley — one of the best locations in the Americas for quetzal sightings — and hiking in the cloud forest of the Chirripó National Park above the valley are among the signature experiences. Dining draws on the Costa Rican highland tradition of slow-cooked casados, river trout from local farms, and the estate’s own coffee and honey.

Hacienda AltaGracia’s conservation work focuses on maintaining and extending the forest corridors that connect the estate’s agricultural land to the national park above, with a reforestation programme on previously cleared slopes and a wildlife monitoring programme tracking the jaguar, tapir, and puma populations whose territories overlap the hacienda boundaries.