I'm from New York. This is the Costa Rica I stayed for.
Off the Grid is what I built after years inside this country's tourism — the version with everything the big operators leave out: room to breathe, and the real thing.
I’m from New York City. I came to Costa Rica young and never really left — I started my first businesses here at twenty-three, most of them in and around tourism. That’s where I saw it up close: almost everything on offer was the same. Commercialized, packed, run at scale — fifty people on a bus, a fixed loop, a photo stop and a gift shop on the way out.
There was a real gap in the middle of all of it — two things almost no one was protecting: authenticity and privacy. The actual country, met on its own terms, with room to breathe. Not performed for a crowd, not shared with forty strangers.
So I went looking for the people who do one thing extraordinarily well, and found them one at a time, all over this country. The chef who built his own kitchen. A coffee fanatic who turned a daily cup into a craft. The guide who knows every turn of a canyon; the naturalist who reads the forest like a page. I took everything they’re great at and built it into one thing — a single, quiet, genuinely private experience, made for you.
LenaFounder, Off the Grid
Why we can take you there
A network of welcomes, built one at a time.
The coffee fanatic
ArenalWeighs the beans to the tenth of a gram. Turned a daily cup into a craft, and will quietly ruin ordinary coffee for you.
The self-made chef
La FortunaBuilt his own kitchen, on his own terms. Cooks the region in front of you, course by course.
The canyon guide
ArenalKnows every turn of the rock — where it's safe to swim, where the light comes down at the right hour.
The naturalist
Arenal forestReads the canopy like street signs: the sloth you'd have passed, the bird you only ever hear.
How we work
We run quieter ones
Smaller groups, emptier places, slower days. Scale is the enemy of the real thing.
Privacy is the point
Not fifty people on a bus. Your party alone, on your own time — the thing almost no one else protects.
The real thing, or nothing
No staged culture, no manufactured moments. Real people, doing what they're great at, in their own country.
Come see the Costa Rica we know.