Tiskita didn't begin as a jungle lodge. It began with a young tropical fruit grower looking for a place to farm.

My father, Peter Aspinall, was born in Costa Rica in 1953 and grew up on a farm in the Sarapiquí region. His childhood was a rural one, surrounded by horses, cattle, rivers, forest and wildlife. His parents were adventurous, outdoorsy people, and some of his earliest memories are of exploring Costa Rica with them.

In the early 1970s, before leaving to study tropical agriculture in Florida, Peter began exploring the southern Pacific coast in search of land of his own.

This was a very different Costa Rica from the one most visitors know today. Roads did not yet reach many communities along the southern coast. People and supplies moved by boat, on horseback and on foot.

Peter eventually travelled by boat to Puerto Pilón and continued south on foot, through the area around Pavones and into Punta Banco.

Peter initially homesteaded a piece of land near the point at Punta Banco and returned to it during breaks from university, intending to establish a farm.

But the property was steep and largely unsuitable for the agricultural project he had in mind. He eventually sold it and, with help from his father, acquired four properties that together would become Tiskita.

The landscape then looked very different.

Parts of the property retained their original rainforest, but large areas around what are now the lodge and cabins had already been cleared and converted to cattle pasture.

One of the first things Peter and his father built was a grass airstrip on an existing area of pasture. With few roads and difficult access by land, the airstrip allowed Peter's parents to fly in supplies and made it possible for him to spend longer periods on the farm.

At this point, there was no plan for a jungle lodge. There was a plan to grow fruit.

Peter had studied tropical fruit agriculture, and his fascination with unusual fruits became central to the early years of Tiskita.

He travelled through South America collecting seeds and looking for interesting species to grow. Later travels took him to Southeast Asia and Australia. Over time, the farm became home to an extraordinary collection of tropical fruit trees.

Some of the early crops included cacao, rambutan and starfruit. Mangosteen, durian, jackfruit and many other species followed, alongside experiments with Annona species and other tropical fruits.

The idea wasn't simply to collect unusual plants. Peter wanted to understand which fruits could grow well in Costa Rica's humid tropics and which individual trees produced the best fruit.

One of his favorite stories is about jackfruit. While travelling in Australia, he tasted an exceptional jackfruit and brought seeds from it back to Costa Rica. He planted dozens of trees from those seeds. Only a handful eventually produced particularly good fruit—and none was quite as good as the fruit from which the seeds had come.

It was a practical lesson in plant genetics: a seed doesn't produce a clone of its mother tree.

Many of those experiments remain part of Tiskita today. What began as an agricultural project eventually developed into the tropical fruit collection guests now walk through, taste and learn about during their stay.

Around this same period, Peter met my mother, Lisbeth Núñez.

Her route to Tiskita was rather different. Lisbeth had grown up mostly in San José and had spent several years studying, working and living in Europe. She returned to Costa Rica for a visit and met Peter at a party—although, amusingly, she had actually had a teenage crush on him years earlier without ever meeting him.

There was also, appropriately, a tropical fruit involved.

When Lisbeth arrived at the party with one of Peter's cousins, they saw a bowl of rambutans. His cousin immediately realized Peter must be there.

He was.

They eventually moved together first to Arenal and then to Punta Banco.

For someone coming from city life and several years in Europe, early Tiskita was an adjustment. The little house had no running water, no bathroom, no kitchen and a dirt floor. When Lisbeth asked about running water, there was a stream beside the house.

Over time, the house grew. So did the orchard. And so did the forest.

While Peter was planting fruit trees, he was also planting trees across areas of former cattle pasture.

Reforestation wasn't something that appeared later when Tiskita became involved in tourism. Planting trees was part of the evolution of the property from its early years.

Old aerial photographs make this history particularly visible. Areas that today appear to be continuous forest can be seen as open pasture. The airstrip is clearly defined. Rows of young fruit trees mark the beginnings of the orchard, while other areas were being allowed or helped to return to forest.

Peter's parents also had a deep interest in wildlife and birds, and his father increasingly documented the property through photography.

Agriculture, wildlife and forest restoration were therefore already intertwined at Tiskita long before anyone called it a jungle lodge.

The fruit farm faced one very practical problem: Tiskita was extremely remote.

Growing fruit was one thing. Getting highly perishable fruit from Punta Banco to a market was another.

But during the 1980s, Costa Rica itself was changing. The country's national park system was expanding, international interest in Costa Rica's extraordinary biodiversity was growing, and a small network of naturalists, scientists, researchers and adventurous travelers was beginning to explore places far beyond the country's traditional tourist routes.

Peter's brother John had experience in tourism and saw another possibility for Tiskita.

By then, some of what was needed was already there. There was an airstrip. Peter and Lisbeth had their house. A cabin had been built for Peter's parents, and another small cabin had followed.

There was also rainforest, wildlife, an increasingly remarkable fruit collection—and an extraordinarily remote location.

The very remoteness that made commercial agriculture difficult could offer visitors something quite different.

By 1987, Tiskita had begun welcoming guests.

Some of the earliest visitors were scientists and researchers who were in Costa Rica for their work, alongside friends, family and some of the early travelers coming to the country specifically to experience its natural places.

They weren't arriving at the Tiskita we know today.

There were only a few simple buildings. Access was difficult. The young orchard was still taking shape, and areas around the cabins that are now surrounded by mature trees were still recovering from their years as cattle pasture.

But the essential ingredients of Tiskita were already there: the forest, the fruit trees, the wildlife, the ocean, the isolation—and a family gradually figuring out how to make a life in this particular corner of Costa Rica.

Tiskita's transition from fruit farm to jungle lodge wasn't really a moment when one project ended and another began. The two grew together.

The orchard remained. The forest continued to recover. More guests came. More cabins were built. And a place originally chosen because Peter wanted to discover what he could grow there slowly became somewhere people travelled to experience what was already growing all around them.

From the Tiskita Archives