Erica and Matt Hogan never intended to walk away with 600 acres of wild rainforest when they went shopping for a little piece of Costa Rica to call their own in 2006.

They happened upon a slice of land that was marketed as a potential harvesting site (i.e.: prime for deforestation) and decided to save it from the chopping block.

"[The land] felt really sacred from the get-go and we felt like this would be a travesty to let this be deforested," Erica told Business Insider. "It was bigger than what we were intending to purchase initially. And one night I just thought, well there are some really cool trees on that property. What if we built treehouses?"

The idea became Finca Bellavista, an epic undertaking that's become a thriving treehouse village, where the locals bounce door-to-door on ziplines and dinner is grown in everyone's backyard.

"It's a labor of love and it's more than just our business," she says. "It's our life."

