Experience
Live the farm with your hands
Two ways to go beyond the table: harvest, cook, share, and leave knowing exactly where your food came from.
El Fogón de María
Wood-fire cooking with heart
Where fire, tradition, and nourishment meet.
Where cooking is lineage.
Where warmth is shared.
El Fogón de María is a deeply personal cooking space in María's home kitchen, here on the farm, where meals are prepared over a traditional wood-fired stove. It is an invitation into Costa Rican home life, lived simply and honestly.
Before the meal, walk the farm and meet the chickens, ducks, goats, and cows, seeing where the food comes from. Then step into her kitchen to prepare lunch at her side: tending the fire, chopping, stirring, and tasting as the meal comes together. Farm-raised chicken or duck, handmade corn tortillas, rice and beans, seasonal vegetables, and homemade cheese or sour cream when the farm allows.
This is not a cooking class, but an immersive experience of everyday family life — offered not as a performance, but as a genuine act of hospitality.
Meet María
María Durán is the heart and hands behind El Fogón. Born on the Caribbean coast, she moved to the south as a teenager, carrying the gift of flavor and tradition learned at her grandmother's side and shaped by the school of life. She cooks the way she lives: tending her chickens, ducks and quail, milking goats and cows, and growing the food and herbs she uses with intuition and love.
$65 + 13% tax ($73.45 total) per person · Families welcome: children from age 3. Ages 3–11 are half price: $32.50 + 13% tax ($36.73 total). About 3 hours · lunchtime · 2 to 6 guests · farm walk included.
"The journey to María's house through the jungle was an experience in itself. Harvesting everything we cooked for lunch was incredible. I couldn't ask for a better experience."
— David Lee · Paramount, California
DEL CAMPO A LA MESA
Every visit begins with a walk through the farm: the greenhouse, the fruit trees, and the animals of Balsa Nueva. Then, sit down to a meal built entirely from what the land offers that day.
Always on the table: fresh-baked bread or María's handmade corn tortillas, soup or salad, garden vegetables, lentils, beans or grains, farm-raised chicken, duck, pork or lamb, and dessert. When the season allows and the menu call for it, homemade butter, cheese, or sour cream from our own animals.
$75 + 13% tax ($84.75 total) per person · about 3 hours · best at lunchtime, also available in the evening · 2 to 12 guests · farm walk included
From the field to the table, led by Angélica
GOOD TO KNOW
Both experiences are by reservation only, with full payment at booking, since we harvest and prepare for each group. Free cancellation up to 48 hours before. Open to lodge guests and outside visitors.
Alma Tierra is about 30–35 minutes from Puerto Jiménez; a 4x4 is required, or we can arrange a round-trip taxi for up to 4 people ($120).