# Meet the owners — Tree House Lodge

## Edsart Besier

*Dutch · self-taught designer, builder, owner*

Edsart came to Costa Rica as a young man in the late 1980s, looking for a place where building could happen on the rainforest's terms — and stayed. He started the original Tree House in 1997: a stilted, split-level bedroom wrapped around a hundred-year-old Sangrillo, reached by a gently-climbing wooden suspension bridge.

Six more houses followed over the decades since — each one its own piece of architecture. He up-cycled the 1980-era American school bus himself (the one he travelled in through Panama and lived in during his first years on this coast, delivering Heliconia flowers from it), and built the bottle walls of the Crystal House by hand. Vibrant paintings by his friend, the Dutch artist Henk van der Vet, hang in the Garden House.

He's the one you'll usually see at reception.

## Pamela Rodríguez

*Argentine · co-owner, wellness instructor*

Pamela joined Edsart later, and now runs everything wellness-side. An ISPEF-certified Physical Education instructor with over twenty years of teaching — Yoga, Pilates, Tae Bo, GAPS body conditioning, Cardio Dance, and Aqua Gym — she teaches at the yoga shala on the property six days a week.

Classes are open to anyone staying: $10 drop-in, all levels, six days a week. Private sessions on request. The Aqua Gym runs from the calm shallows just off our beach on glassy mornings.

She runs the fitness side of the business under its own brand (Tree House Jungle Fitness on Facebook + Instagram) and books wedding wellness programs for the whole-estate parties.

## ● Iguanaverde Foundation

On-site green-iguana reserve. We raise juvenile green iguanas and release them back into the refuge every year — part of the lodge's commitment to the wider Refugio Nacional Gandoca-Manzanillo. You'll see iguanas all over the ten acres. They're welcome here.

## The team that keeps the ten acres running.

Tree House Lodge has been family-staffed since the beginning — a small, all-local team, many of whom have been with the lodge for years. Full bios from the staff themselves will land here next — write to the lodge if you'd like them sooner.

### Reception

Front desk, bookings, welcome dinners. Bilingual + first port of call for anything mid-stay.

### Housekeeping

Fresh sheets and a full clean every other day across all seven houses — fresh towels whenever you ask. Composes the towel-shapes that every guest photographs.

### Grounds + maintenance

Looks after the gardens, the EV charger, the BBQ, and the wooden bridge up to the Tree House.