Long-term rental · Available from 8 September
Wake up above the Central Valley.
A fully independent two-bedroom casita at Theleme — a permaculture community in the mountains above Grecia, Costa Rica. Furnished, two internet providers, trails from the door, and a hot tub pointed at the whole valley.
$850 per month, everything included · month to month
The house
Built as architecture, not as a rental.
This building was the workshop of Franklin Zúñiga, the Costa Rican transcendental artist, before it was remodelled into a home. That is why it looks the way it does — the double-height glass, the light, the proportions of a place built for making things. His sculpture is still scattered through the garden around it.
A single-slope roof, a wall of glass two storeys high, and dark vertical timber that lets the building settle into the treeline. The casita stands on its own, across the lane from the main house — separate entrance, separate everything. You are not sharing a wall with anybody.
Downstairs is open plan: a hardwood kitchen with granite counters, a live-edge dining table, a deep leather sectional facing the valley, and a cast-iron wood stove for the evenings when the mountain turns cool — which, at this altitude, it does. A wrought-iron spiral staircase winds up to the second level, a light-filled room wrapped on two sides in glass, with the best view in the building.
The bedroom takes the quiet end of the house, with a hardwood bed and storage built into the frame. The bathroom is fully tiled with a glass shower enclosure. There is a washer and dryer inside the unit — not down the road, not shared.
From the air — the main house, the casita and the forest behind
What's in it
Furnished and ready to live in.
- Full kitchenElectric range and oven, large fridge with water dispenser, granite counters, hardwood cabinetry.
- Washer & dryerStacked Whirlpool unit inside the casita. No laundromat runs.
- Wood-burning stoveCast iron, in the main room. At 1,687 m the evenings genuinely earn it.
- Hot tubOn its own pad outside, facing the full sweep of the Central Valley.
- Furnished throughoutSectional sofa, hardwood dining set, bed with built-in storage, wall-mounted television.
- Two-storey glass wallThe valley, the sunsets and the weather, from almost every seat in the house.
- Gated and privateThe community is entered through an automated gate. Remote, and safe with it.
- Parking at the doorOff-street, on the community's own paved lane.
For people who work
Two internet providers. One of them is in orbit.
The property runs Starlink and Diginet at the same time, through a dual-WAN aggregator that fails over automatically. If one provider drops — and in rural Costa Rica, one provider eventually drops — the connection moves to the other without your call ending.
That is a materially different proposition from most mountain rentals in this country, where "high-speed internet" means one line and a shrug. If your income depends on staying connected, this is the part of the listing to read twice.
- Starlink + Diginet, always both
- Automatic failover between providers
- Included in the monthly utilities
- Upstairs room doubles as a study with a view
Outside the door
Trails, a farm, and a national park for a neighbour.
The property borders Bosque del Niño, the protected forest reserve above Grecia and one of the most beautiful forests in Costa Rica. Hiking trails start at the house — you do not drive to a trailhead, you walk out of the front door and onto it. A short hike brings you to the Catarata Bosque del Niño waterfall. Cloud forest, birds, and the kind of silence that takes newcomers a week to get used to.
Theleme is a working permaculture community, so a good part of your shopping happens on foot. Fresh goat milk, yoghurt and cheese from the community's goats. Eggs from the chickens, ducks and turkeys. Organic produce straight out of the greenhouse. It is a short walk, and it is better than anything at the supermarket down the mountain.
And the view — the reason people stop talking when they arrive — is the full sweep of the Central Valley, west, with nothing built between you and it.
- Trails from the doorStraight into the forest — no car, no trailhead, no parking fee.
- Bosque del NiñoThe protected reserve borders the property directly.
- Goat dairyFresh milk, yoghurt and cheese from the community's own goats.
- EggsFrom the chickens, the ducks and the turkeys.
- Greenhouse produceOrganic vegetables, picked the day you buy them.
- Sunsets, west-facingUnobstructed across the valley, most evenings of the year.
Included and on request
You are not just renting a house.
Theleme is a working ecotourism project, so a lot of what happens here is open to you as a resident. Some of it costs nothing at all. The rest can be booked whenever you want it.
Free, whenever you like
- The viewpoint — the Central Valley from SJO airport all the way to San Ramón
- The hot tub and the swing
- The hobby farm — goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys
- Unlimited hiking — waterfalls, Poás volcano, the cold plunge
Bookable on request
- An international meal cooked from the garden
- Energy healing massage
- Yoga and stretching classes
- Calisthenics classes
- The art of Franklin Zúñiga, explored properly
- Guided meditation
- Cacao ceremony
- Introduction to permaculture — how to eat from the land
- The principles of Theleme: building a sustainable, conscious community
- Spiritual healing — shadow work, reawakening romance, 1:1 sessions with Coach Vaillant
See it moving
Theleme on film.
Years of the community on video — what it is, how it has grown, and the day one of the goats had twins.
Rising over the forest that surrounds the property
The hobby farm, and the goats behind the fresh milk
More from the community
Gallery
The whole place, room by room.
The setting
You are renting a house inside a work of land art.
Theleme is a permaculture, ecotourism and retreat community spread across a mountainside — roundhouses with shingled roofs, terraced lawns cut into the slope, forest on every side. It hosts retreats, events and a small resident community, and it is quiet in the particular way that only somewhere at altitude and off the main road can be.
Sculpture is everywhere, and it is good. Much of it is the work of Franklin Zúñiga, the transcendental artist whose workshop the casita used to be. A hooded stone figure cradling a lit glass orb stands along the entrance lane. A brushed-steel bloom the height of a person opens in the middle of a lawn. A blue seated figure folds into itself beside a cactus. You will walk past them daily and keep finding new ones.
It is, for that reason, a place that suits artists and anyone who came here to recharge rather than to be entertained.
Who you'd be living near
The casita sits across the lane from the owner's house. Vaillant (Ale) Gicqueau is a Franco-American entrepreneur — École Centrale Paris, an M.S. from UC Davis, and an IBM alumnus who went on to found and sell one clinical-research company and build another he still runs. He speaks English, French and Spanish, and lives between Costa Rica, the United States and Europe. He is also the author of a book on parental alienation and was recently on Europe 1 radio.
He lives here with his wife Joselyn, her father Efraín, and her daughter Mairpas. Close enough that someone is always around if a pipe bursts or a package needs signing; far enough that you will not see them unless you want to.
There is a school four kilometres down the road, taking children from age three to eleven — worth knowing if you are moving with a young family.
Location
Genuinely remote. Still an hour from the airport.
The casita sits at 1,687 metres — 5,535 feet — in the mountains above Grecia, in the province of Alajuela. At this altitude Costa Rica stops being hot. Days settle into the low twenties Celsius, nights turn genuinely cool, and there is no air conditioning anywhere in the building because there has never been a reason to install one.
Grecia is twenty-five minutes down the mountain, and it is a genuinely good town to have as your base — repeatedly named one of the cleanest in Latin America. Supermarkets, banks, a hospital, a proper Friday farmers' market, restaurants, hardware stores, and the famous red metal church on the square. Everything an errand day needs, without the traffic of the capital.
Twelve minutes away there is Smash, a tennis club with pickleball courts too — which is closer than most people manage in a city. Juan Santamaría international airport is about an hour. You can land at SJO and be in the hot tub before your bag stops spinning, and still feel a long way from anywhere.
- School (ages 3–11)4 km
- Smash tennis & pickleball12 min
- Grecia25 min
- SJO airportAbout 1 hour
- San RamónAbout 1 hour
Driving times as the owner actually drives them, not optimistic map estimates.
Open in Google Maps ↗
Rates
One number, and it is the real one.
Available from 8 September
Month to month, or longer if you want the certainty. No resort fees, no cleaning surcharge, no utilities surprise at the end of the month. Deposit and start date discussed directly — just ask.
Enquire about availabilityGet in touch
Come and see it.
Send a note, or message on WhatsApp. Questions about the term, the internet, pets, or bringing your own furniture are all fair game.