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our story
a dream that never really left
If you are reading this, I would like to tell you how La Casita began.
Not as a business plan, a building or a perfectly formed idea, but as a dream I carried with me for many years.
I had always wanted to bring education and tourism together. I imagined creating a place where people from other parts of the world could discover Costa Rica through our language, history, culture, art, food and everyday life.
I wanted to teach, but not only from a classroom.
I wanted the country itself to become part of the lesson.
Some dreams begin long before we find the courage, the time or the resources to build them.
it began at university
the first idea
The earliest version of La Casita appeared in my university graduation project: a school of Spanish as a second language.
Even then, the idea was about more than teaching vocabulary and grammar. I imagined a place where learning Spanish would become a way of entering Costa Rican life—speaking with people, understanding our history, preparing our food, visiting our communities and seeing the country through the language spoken here.
That project gave the dream its first shape.
It existed on paper before it existed anywhere else.
There were objectives, plans and imagined classrooms, but behind all of them was something deeply personal: the desire to build a space where I could teach others about the country I call home.
the years in between
After university, life took me into the corporate world.
The idea did not disappear, but bringing it to life took much longer than I had imagined. Work, responsibilities and the practical demands of everyday life occupied the space where the project might otherwise have grown.
Still, the dream remained.
It returned in quiet moments, in conversations, in notes saved for later and in the persistent feeling that one day I needed to create something of my own—something that brought together education, tourism and the desire to share Costa Rica with others.
For a long time, La Casita existed in that space between an idea and a decision.
Eventually, I understood that waiting until everything was certain would mean waiting forever. I needed to place something real in the world, even if it was only the first stone.
A dream quietly waiting
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giving the dream a name
January 24, 2023
On January 24, 2023, La Casita del Turista was officially registered as a limited liability company in Costa Rica.
At the time, we did not have a residence, classrooms or the infrastructure we have today. We did not yet know exactly what the final project would become.
But we had a name.
We had a legal beginning.
And, perhaps most importantly, we had made a commitment to continue.
Registering the company was our way of saying: this idea exists now. It was the first tangible step, the first stone placed in the foundation of something we were still learning how to imagine.
Early 2025
choosing to build
At the beginning of 2025, our conversations began to change. We stopped speaking only about what La Casita could become someday and started asking what it would take to begin building it now. We explored financing, reviewed our possibilities and made the decision to invest in the first residence of La Casita del Turista. It was a significant financial commitment and a deeply personal one. Instead of waiting to acquire a separate property, we chose to transform the space we already had: our own home. The house was small, and the idea was much larger than the space appeared to allow. But we looked at it differently. We imagined what could be built above it, around it and down the natural slope of the property. Gradually, the home we knew began to make room for the place we had imagined.
building the first residence
October and November 2025
Construction officially began toward the end of 2025. The work expanded the house upward and continued down the property through a sequence of levels and terraces. What had once been a modest family home slowly began to transform into the first residential learning space of La Casita del Turista. The upper floor became the residential area, with bedrooms for participants, a shared bathroom and a space dedicated to studying and learning. Below, we created an open-air kitchen where food could become part of the experience. We added places to sit, talk and rest. We built recreational spaces, a pool and, at the lower end of the property, a garden where another kind of learning could take root. Every level was designed with a different moment of the experience in mind: sleeping, studying, cooking, gathering, resting, sharing and simply enjoying the feeling of being at home. The construction was not only about adding rooms. We were giving physical form to an idea that had lived for years in notebooks, conversations and imagination.
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more than a project
Building the experience at the same time
While the house was changing, the project was changing with it.
We were not only choosing materials, planning rooms or watching walls rise. We were also developing programs, studying routes, imagining classes, preparing documents and asking how each part of the experience should feel.
How should someone be welcomed?
What would make the house feel personal without losing privacy?
How could a lesson continue through a market, a train ride, a shared meal or a walk through a community?
How could participants learn about Costa Rica without experiencing it only as spectators?
These questions influenced the project as much as any architectural plan.
We began to understand that the real work was not simply constructing a residence. It was creating the conditions for learning, curiosity and human connection to happen naturally.
becoming la casita
The idea grows beyond its first form
La Casita began with the vision of a Spanish school, but it continued to grow.
Language remained an essential part of our identity, yet we realized that the same residential model could open the door to many other subjects: biodiversity, gastronomy, art, culture, heritage and educational journeys inspired by places and stories.
The original dream had not been replaced. It had expanded.
What began as a way to teach Spanish became a wider vision for immersive education: a place where people could live together for a short time, explore a subject deeply and travel as part of the learning process.
That is how La Casita became an immersive learning center.
Not because we abandoned the first idea, but because we finally understood everything it had the potential to become.
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still becoming
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La Casita has been built slowly.
First as a university project.
Then as a dream carried quietly through the years.
Later as a registered company, a collection of ideas and a promise that we would find a way forward.
And finally, as a real place shaped through construction, investment, uncertainty, work and hope.
There are parts of the story that are already visible: the bedrooms, the study room, the outdoor kitchen, the pool, the garden and the spaces where people will gather.
Other parts will continue to be written by the people who arrive here, the programs we develop and everything we learn along the way.
La Casita is not a story about having everything figured out from the beginning.
It is a story about listening to an idea that refused to disappear—and choosing, eventually, to build it.
Stone by stone.
Room by room.
Experience by experience.
If one day you come to learn with us, you will not be arriving at a project that appeared overnight. You will be entering a dream that was carried for years, carefully transformed and finally given a home.
Welcome to La Casita.
With warmth,
Diego & Simón
Founders of La Casita del Turista
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