https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpyo1wLBQvw
Two years ago I told you about Bellavista, the stunning treehouse community in Costa Rica’s forests that looks like the Ewoks’ village in Endor. They just upgraded it with 7.2mbps 3G access, and now they run 100% on solar power.
https://gizmodo.com/bellavistas-biodigesting-treehouses-are-endor-on-earth-367835
Gizmodo reader Matthew Garza spent part of his honeymoon there and sent us these videos, showing how it feels to zip across treehouses, and watch life from the trees. I talked with Erica Hogan, one of Bellavista’s owners, who told me about the tech upgrades they just got:
The 3G is surprisingly reliable! I think we got really lucky – the cell tower broadcasting the signal is downvalley in Piedras Blancas, and shoots right up the Rio Bellavista river valley, directly hitting the ‘interior’ of the finca. Minimum connection speed guaranteed is 1 mbps and we regularly
connect at 7.2 mbps.
Here at base camp, we are out of direct range of the signal’s broadcast, but we bought an antennae and amplifier to create our ‘work zone’ here at the office/entrance. It works like a dream!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IWmQmbmQ-0
Apparently, some of the treehouses have full bars straight from the tower. I don’t know if having a cellphone in paradise is a curse or a godsend, but the possibility of me moving there for a while have increased ten-fold. [Bellavista]
