Iguanaverde Foundation
The Iguanaverde Foundation is on the property itself — a Dutch-Costa-Rican initiative dedicated to breeding green iguanas in natural-habitat conditions and re-establishing a wild reserve. Founded in partnership with Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica and the Wageningen University Research Centre, registered as a non-profit in the Netherlands. The Iguana Conservation Tour runs Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, free for lodge guests who book any tour through reception. Rules are simple: no littering, no smoking, low voices, leave the plants and the wildlife where they are.
Breeding back the green iguana
Hunted for generations for its meat and eggs and squeezed by habitat loss, the green iguana has vanished from much of the Costa Rican lowland forest where it was once everywhere. Iguanaverde's answer is patient: raise iguanas in conditions as close to wild as possible, then release them. The heart of the program is a 2,000-square-metre enclosure that mimics the surrounding jungle — a sandy nesting area, food plants, mature trees for shelter and forage, and a fish pond for water — so the iguanas stay self-sufficient, which is exactly what their survival outside the fence depends on. Juveniles go back into the wild every year, and you'll meet their relatives basking all over the estate's ten acres.
The Iguana Conservation Tour
The tour is a slow walk through the botanical gardens to the reserve, with a guide who can narrate an iguana's whole life — how they hatch, what they eat, how they camouflage, how the adults behave when they're ready to breed, and how a juvenile earns its release into the wild. A projection room screens a documentary on the iguana's life cycle for the parts a walk can't show you, and the gardens themselves are half the pleasure: the same ten acres of palms and heliconias the houses sit in, read at iguana pace.
It's a genuinely good tour for children. Kids collect edible flowers and leaves along the way and feed the iguanas themselves, and the keen ones can help with the everyday care of the enclosure. For adults it's the closest most people will ever stand to a wild-raised iguana — a documentary in living flesh.
Visiting days & ground rules
The tour runs three days a week and keeps a few simple rules so the reserve stays calm.
- Tour days — Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Book at reception.
- Free for lodge guests who book any tour through reception; otherwise a small admission fee goes straight to the foundation — ask reception for the current rate.
- No littering, no smoking, voices low.
- Everything stays where it lives — no taking plants or wildlife, and iguanas are never hunted. The lodge trades in no flora or fauna products of any kind.
