Thursday, May 16, 2013

New Drake Bay luxury hotel totally sweet

Posted: Friday, March 01, 2013 - By Lindsay Fendt
Asian themed cabins generate a feeling of exotic luxury at Copa de Arbol. 
 
Copa de Arbol Hotel 1
Lindsay Fendt
This new, upscale collection of cabinas features Asian inspired design and a very chic restaurant.
 
Like most of the visitors to Corcovado National Park, I was more than happy to contend with high humidity, scalding temperatures and my skin’s exposure to more than 6,000 species of insects residing outside of my tent to experience the stunning landscape and exotic animal sightings in one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.
While I’m no stranger to roughing it, what I did not realize, covered in dirt, lying in a puddle of my sweat, was how drastically air conditioning and silky sheets at Drake Bay’s Copa de Arbol would change my appreciation for my surroundings and, honestly, my general outlook on life the following evening.
The newcomer on the Drake Bay hotel scene, Copa de Arbol is the clear front-runner for the most lavish lodgings in town. Its eight air-conditioned cabins are decked out with glossy wooden floors and faux-palm roofs to make you feel perfectly at home in the jungle, while the Asian decor generates a feeling of exotic luxury. Each cabin has its own balcony, allowing guests to soak up the spectacular views of the beach and rain forest.
Copa de Arbol Hotel 2
Room at Copa de Arbol Hotel.
Lindsay Fendt
Meals are all included at Copa de Arbol and, while the selection is limited, the simple casados are well executed and delicious.  From the open-air restaurant, visitors can also head up to a third-floor lounge overlooking the bay.
Opened in May, Copa de Arbol had been in the works for 10 years, according to its owners, native Californians Mike Michaelsen and Jason Tress. The hotel’s Playa Caletas address, an area only accessible by boat or rigorous jungle trek, was a significant obstacle during its construction, especially when building the pool.
The glorious three-tiered infinity pool sits right in the middle of the property and boasts the only hot tub in town. Though the hotel had to shut down for a month to install it, the owners have no regrets about the time investment.
“If you do this, you intend to do a good job,” Michaelsen said. “Vacations are what photo albums are full off, people work really hard to get the time off and the money to do that and they are trusting you. You can’t screw that up.”
During my stay I was hard-pressed to find a screw-up, and Copa de Arbol walks the fine line of eco-lodge and high-class hotel with ease, allowing Drake Bay’s thundering wilderness do most of the talking.
The views are everywhere, but to really get a feel for the surroundings, guests can hit up one of the hotel’s private hiking trails or swing in a hammock at the easily accessible beach. The Caletas area is known for its secluded coves, and a walk down the coastline is sure to lead to the discovery of a swimming-hole hideaway.
“Here you can have a sloth fall into your lap at breakfast, and in October the whale watching is incredible.” Michaelsen said. “This area does a whole lot of the work for you, because it tends to exceed people’s expectations.”
Going There: 
Copa de Arbol is located in Drake Bay. The fastest way to get there is to fly from San José to Drake Bay, and the hotel provides shuttle service. Guests with rental cars can make the 4.5-hour drive to Sierpe and park there for $6 a day.
Prices at Copa del Arbol range from $200 per person in the low season to $280 during the holiday season for a deluxe cabin and $220-$300 for a luxury cabin. Children get a discount starting at $140. The price includes one night, three meals, kayaks and stand up paddle boards.
 
 
 

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Over the trees and far away

Over the trees and far away

Pretoria - For South African engineer Mark Brown developing zip-line or canopy tours has been a long journey, which has involved detours from surfing waves,to making sandwiches.
Brown, 40, of Durban, was surfing around Central America when he got work on a canopy tour in Costa Rica.
 
“I realised this was an amazing thing to take back to South Africa. It gave me a reason to come home after two years.”
Money was always a problem, but not an insurmountable one, for the intrepid Brown, who cut his travel costs by hitch-hiking to Buenos Aires to catch the cheapest flight home.
Then, once he had identified the Tsitsikamma Forest as the ideal spot to set up a ride, he had to wait a year to get the go-ahead from the government to operate.
He also had to earn more money, so he started a sandwich-making business in Cape Town.
Once back in the forest, he got to work designing a tree-friendly rig, that was an improvement on what he had seen in Coast Rica.
“There was no penetration. No damage. Not a nail or a screw.
“We used rubber pads and water blocks.
“If you were to loosen it, the forest would still be pristine.”
Brown says the value of a canopy experience is that 70 percent of forest life – the spiders, the birds – live in the canopy layer.
He credits Ed Perry, aUS biologist in Costa Rica, for developing a pulley system to give him access to canopies.
Then it was taken to the eco-tourism level, “so that everybody should have the joy of being in this previously inaccessible realm of nature”.
 
His company, Canopy Tours, has six franchises – in the Karkloof and the Champagne Castle area of the Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal; the Magaliesberg in North West; the Tsitsikamma in the Western Cape; Magoebaskloof in Limpopo; and Malolotja in Swaziland.
Each is unique. The Tsitsikamma route has 700-year-old yellowwood trees; some platforms on the Karkloof route are on steel towers for the lack of Tsitsikamma-like trees; there are ledge walks along a cliff face on the Drakensberg and Malolotja routes; and the Magaliesberg route is over the world’s second-oldest mountain range.
Brown remembers how difficult it was to access a rock pool below a waterfall, over which there is now a cable on the Magoebaskloof tour.
“To get to it we had to jump off a waterfall, swim over the pool, climb up some rocks and abseil down a cliff.”
By December, Brown hopes to have another franchise up and running in the Western Cape’s Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve.
Its opening will mark the 10th anniversary of his enterprise.
“Hottentots Holland has a forested bowl and two waterfalls that are inaccessible.
“There’s also lots of fynbos and there’ll be a bridge over a waterfall between two cliffs.”
Safety is obviously the top priority, and Brown says his franchise prides itself on its routes being “over-designed”.
“I always get a third-party engineer to sign them off and do a double-check.
“The cables can handle 11 tons. They can easily lift a car.”
Then there’s maintenance on a daily, weekly and six-monthly basis – the last of which Brown does himself.
 
During their daily inspections, guides are generally on the lookout for any possible damage caused by rock falls or lightning strikes.
Brown says another “magic part of it all” is that the guides are people found in areas around the tours, who were once unemployed and unskilled.
 
“They have become the hosts. It wasn’t planned that way – it just worked out that way.”
On the nitty-gritty front, Brown says he has been working with the Department of Labour to develop industry standards.
 
More fun are his plans to extend the Karkloof ride by three additional runs, introduce tours at full moon and develop a treehouse on a cliff face in which people can stay. - Pretoria News