The story
Phil bought a 250-acre farm at the very tip of the Osa Peninsula in the late 1980s, where the Golfo Dulce meets the open Pacific. Much of the land had already been cleared for cattle pasture. After three years of farming and reforesting it himself, he converted part of the open ground into gardens, hand-built three cabins and a restaurant, and opened Bosque del Cabo in 1990. It became one of the first — and is now one of the longest continuously running — nature lodges on the Osa. From 1999 onward, the owners bought roughly 500 more acres: the land along their own driveway (now regrown secondary rainforest where guests report seeing peccaries and jungle cats), nearly a mile of beachfront, tracts of virgin forest, and a former teak plantation. Pasture reclaimed by forest now regularly turns up tapirs.
The result today is 750-plus acres crowning a point 500 feet above the water, with cabinas and larger houses perched on the cliffs for ocean views or set back in garden settings, hiking trails running down to deserted beaches on both the gulf and Pacific sides, and a staff that — guest after guest reports — learns every name within the first afternoon. One reviewer, on their eleventh visit, called it simply "the best of the best."