#poste rojo

Disclaimer: What I’m about to say will sound like a lot of complaining, but I don’t mean for it to. I understand lots of people don’t get to do what I’m doing, so I won’t abuse the privilege by bitching, but in order to give an accurate assessment of my experience/accommodations, this may sound a tad negative.

  Poste Rojo is a “Treehouse Hostel” in the jungle just outside Granada. The place is cool, the staff is super nice, but it’s NOT a treehouse. Like, at all. It’s really just some crumby cabins and a really awesome bar, scattered on a mountainside. They’re all built AROUND trees, meaning tree-trunks are present in all buildings, but NOWHERE in Poste Rojo was I ever IN a tree.

  This is my “Treehouse.”

See.

  To get here, you have to hike up a mountain. The bar/kitchen/reception/shower is at the very top, along with one of the two nicer bathrooms/outhouse. The dorms and private rooms are in a big cabin in the very middle, along with the second outhouse. The “treehouse” was down and far left of the dorms. No bathroom. Meaning, day or night, the nearest outhouse was one helluva hike away.

  I learned to pee outside…and off a balcony.

  If I could draw a map for people interested in staying here, this is what it would look like:

  If I could say something to anyone considering staying here, this is what I would say:

  “Don’t stay in the treehouse. Stay in the dorms. Bring toilet paper. Hope you like animals.”

  If I had to guess the history of Poste Rojo:

  The owner built a cabin around a tree. Went further up a mountain and built an even bigger cabin modeled after sleepaway camp. Went even further up the mountain and built a super awesome bar and then decided to stop there and party, neglecting to maintain any rooms except the dorms, which admittedly looked pretty awesome. 

  This neglect made the “Treehouse” (where I was staying), the-Cabin-That-Time-Forgot. Even the MANAGER, Ryan, admitted that he hadn’t even seen it, cause it's so far down the fricken mountain! It’s kinda dilapidated and NOT at all as advertised. As I said before, it's not in a tree. There is no hammock, and the door down to it was nailed shut. It is also a hangout for all sorts of scary creatures. While there, I had some pretty terrifying experiences with my “roommate,” a huge Bird Spider (as big as my wide-spread hand) that I named Peter Parker, because his supreme speed and spidey-sense made him impossible to kill, though I tried several times:

A fearless possum that inhabited the tree that my cabin was built around, definitely had no qualms coming and going as he pleased. And my last night, a howler monkey decided to spend the night about my cabin, doing his creepy T-Rex growl keeping me up in complete terror.

  That’s apparently part of the charm of this place. You get to be one with nature. You get to experience the jungle all up-close-and-personal.

  They can keep it.