The villa
Built in 2016, on a hillside, facing west.
3,200 square feet on 1.75 acres of secondary rainforest, at 250–300 metres. High enough that the air moves. Close enough that you hear the surf.
The rooms
Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and nobody sharing.
We named them years ago and the names stuck. Every bedroom has its own bathroom and air conditioning, and the two guest rooms have their own entrances — useful when one half of the party wants a lie-in.
Primary suite
King bed
- Ensuite bathroom
- Air conditioning
- Desk
- Private porch
Ocean Room
Queen bed
- Ensuite bathroom
- Air conditioning
- Desk
- Private entrance
Jungle Room
Queen bed
- Ensuite bathroom
- Air conditioning
- Desk
- Private entrance
Sleeps 6 comfortably. A roll-away and an inflatable queen are available in a pinch. There are also two small offices — the Macaw Office has the bookshelf, and you are welcome to take anything off it and leave anything behind.
A small piece of history
The house has had three names.
The family who built it called it Casa Tortuga — turtle house. The next owners renamed it Quiet Sunset, which anyone who has watched the light go down from the pool will understand.
We loved both, and chose neither. Rosa Blanca comes from our own surnames — von Rosen and White — because we wanted the house to carry the family into whatever comes next.
But the turtle stayed. There is one etched into the glass at the bar, lit from beneath by LEDs that change colour, and after dark it throws a slow glow across the room that guests tend to sit and watch.
There are thirteen of them.
The one at the bar is the easy one. The rest are hiding — carved in wood, worked into tile, painted into pictures, tucked onto shelves. Children find them faster than adults do, which we have stopped being surprised by.
Nobody has to tell you where they are. Find all thirteen and tell us when you check out — we will believe you.
What makes it different
Three things you will not find in most listings here.
No stairs, anywhere
Everything on one floor
Almost every villa in this price range is built over two or three levels, because the hillsides here invite it. This one is not. Kitchen, living room, all three bedrooms, the pool and the terraces are on a single level. Nobody hauls a suitcase upstairs, nobody navigates steps at night, and it makes a real difference on a stay of a month.
Worth saying plainly if anyone in your party has a knee, a hip, or simply no interest in stairs on holiday.
Complete privacy
You cannot see another house
Not a neighbour's roof, not a window, not a light at night. The property sits on 1.75 acres of rainforest and every sightline runs into canopy or out to the Pacific. This is genuinely rare here — most listings on the platforms have a neighbouring house in shot and simply crop around it.
The outdoor shower, the pool at midnight, coffee on the terrace in whatever you slept in. Privacy is what makes those things usable.
Secure gated access
Gated and watched over
Keypad entry at the gate, with motion detection and cameras covering the exterior. All of it faces outward — there are no cameras inside the house, and there never will be.
It means you can leave for a day at Corcovado without thinking about it.
- The outdoor shower
- It is the thing people mention most often and the thing they miss most when they leave. Hot water, open sky, and the sound of the forest. Most guests stop using the indoor shower within about two days.
- A birder's property
- Guests who arrive with binoculars end up cancelling their tours, and guests who arrive without them end up borrowing ours. The canopy sits at eye level from the terrace, which is an unusual vantage — you look across at the birds rather than up at them.
- Monkeys on a schedule
- Howlers start before dawn. Capuchins work the slope below the Jungle Room, and the berry tree below the primary bedroom. Once you know which trees they visit, you stop hoping to see them and start expecting to.
- Local art in every room
- Paintings, carvings and Boruca masks bought here over ten years, mostly from the Wednesday market in Uvita. If you like something, we will tell you where it came from and you can go and find the person who made it.
- Built for unpacking
- Built-in closets in every bedroom and more hangers than you will need. It sounds like a small thing until you have lived out of a suitcase for a month.
What is here
Outside
- Infinity edge, ocean view, recently overhauled
- Gas, plumbed in
- Outdoor shower
- Covered outdoor kitchen and dining
- Carport
Inside
- Gas cooktop and a properly equipped kitchen
- 70-inch TV with Netflix and Prime
- Sonos soundbar with the 70" TV
- Alexa speakers in each room
- Whole-house water filtration
- Laundry
Systems
- 120V runs on solar and battery. 240V runs on the utility grid (ICE).
- Solar installed 2021
- Starlink primary, Reycom fibre to the home (FTTH)
- Google Nest mesh throughout
- Keypad entry at the gate
- Backup battery throughout the house, on solar
- Motion detection and exterior cameras
Solar and grid
When the power goes, most of the house does not notice.
In a grid outage the house keeps running on solar and battery — lights, outlets, fridge, televisions and internet all stay on, with no generator to start and nothing for you to do. Hot water has its own solar array and is unaffected either way. Air conditioning, the laundry, the microwave and the pool pump are on the grid and pause until power returns. The cooktop and oven are gas, so you can still cook.
Worth knowing in advance, because otherwise it looks like something is broken when it is working exactly as designed.
Most of the time you will not notice an outage at all. The giveaway is the microwave — a blinking clock, or a blank display. That is the only thing in the house that tells you.
ICE is the national electricity company here, and they are genuinely good. Outages are usually fixed within hours rather than days.
The full detail — Sol-Ark hybrid inverter with roughly 20 kWh of battery storageOn solar and battery · 120V
- Wall outlets
- Lighting
- Ceiling fans
- Refrigerator
- Televisions
- Internet (both connections)
On the grid · 240V
- Air conditioning
- Washer and dryer
- Pool pump
- Microwave
Where exactly
What is Phase 8?
Ojochal grew in numbered phases up the hillside behind the coast road, and locals still use the numbers as addresses. Phase 8 sits high on the ridge — far enough up for the ocean breeze and the view, close enough that the village is a few minutes down the hill.
It is quiet. Houses are spread out and separated by rainforest rather than fences, so you see canopy and ocean rather than neighbours. Coatis and howler monkeys use the trees as a road.
The village itself has a reputation out of all proportion to its size — a French and Québécois expat community turned a town of a few hundred into the best place to eat on this coast.
Getting up here
Yes — get AWD or 4WD.
The coastal highway, Route 34, is fully paved and any rental car handles it. The mountain roads around Ojochal are a different question. We always recommend AWD or 4WD. The roads get slick, and the rain here arrives without warning even outside the wet season.
“The road to the house is well-maintained and makes for easy access. 2WD seems reasonable in dry season, but I would imagine 4WD is key if it rains.”
Both are true. Our road is well maintained and guests have managed in a 2WD in the dry months. We still recommend AWD, because a single afternoon downpour changes the surface and the cost of being wrong is your holiday.
What you should know
The things a brochure would leave out.
- The guest rooms open onto the pool
- Both guest bedrooms have their own doors straight out to the pool deck. That is wonderful for adults and worth thinking hard about with small children. If you are travelling with a child who needs to be close to a parent overnight, or who cannot yet swim, the guest rooms are the wrong choice — talk to us and we will help you work out the sleeping arrangements before you book.
- This is a rainforest
- You will see insects, geckos and wildlife — that is what you are coming for. The house is screened, professionally treated on a schedule, and inspected between stays. If something needs attention, Jan and Sonia, our concierges, are twenty minutes away.
- Humidity is real
- Nothing dries quickly. Swimsuits and towels take their time. The house is designed for airflow, which helps more than you would expect.
- The howler monkeys start before dawn
- They are loud, they are close, and most guests end up loving them. If you are a light sleeper, the bedrooms have air conditioning and close up quietly.
- The gardens are steep
- A hillside rainforest property with a view, rather than a garden you stroll through. Beautiful to look at, not built for wandering.
- Bring AWD
- See the access notes — the coastal highway is fine in any car, but the mountain roads here are another matter.