This Gorgeous Glass Home in Costa Rica Was Built Around a Vintage Airstream Travel Trailer

When life circumstances change, even the most avid RVers can, at some point, say goodbye to living full-time on the road and trade RV life for a house anchored permanently to the ground. Kristen Sarah and Siya Zarrabi, originally from Toronto, have spent five years traveling around North America in their renovated 1976 Airstream travel trailer. This allowed them to be more minimalist, tiny, and mobile, and they loved every second of that adventure.

That's why, when they decided to put down roots in the magnificent tropical jungle of Costa Rica and build a permanent home where they could raise their daughter Kai surrounded by nature, it was very hard for them to leave the Airstream behind. So they found a creative way to keep it and still live in it - they designed their new and ambitious eco-home around it.

Kristen and Siya are both travel lovers and have been traveling the world, both separately and together, since 2004. They purchased and renovated their 31-foot 1976 Airstream, which they named "Luna," back in 2016. The trailer was transformed from a musty time capsule into a cozy and fully functioning rolling home with a living area, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and even a desk space. They gave it a second renovation in 2020 to make it more suitable for traveling with their kid and rescue dog.

The travel trailer was central to their adventures and a big part of their lives until 2022 when they decided to move permanently to Costa Rica. They shipped the Airstream from Miami, Florida, to their land in an eco-community called Alegria Village in Machuca Valley and have spent the last two years designing and building a sustainable, eco-friendly structure around it.

The travel trailer is essentially parked permanently inside their glass-enclosed home and has been given a new purpose. It now serves as the family's private sleeping space. The fact that this Airstream has gone through so many changes throughout the years just goes to show the versatility of these types of vehicles. Despite its simplicity, the interior can be configured in many ways depending on your needs and proclivities.

For the new house, called "Casa Luna," the couple settled on an open-concept design. This means the kitchen, dining, and living room in the new home are basically in the same huge area and seamlessly connect with the space where the Airstream is parked. The trailer now houses the couple's bedroom, their daughter's bedroom, and a small desk space for Siya. The Casa Luna also has a huge bathroom and a guest room that is designed with multifunctionality in mind, as it also acts as Kristen's home office and laundry space.

Getting the vintage Airstream into its designated spot inside the house was not an easy task. The trailer needed to be towed frontwards to make the entrance door accessible from inside of the house, so they pulled it in with a truck, which drove away through the house. Then, they attached it to a hand dolly, and eight people pushed and pulled it to get it into the desired position. Obviously, all this happened before installing all the glass panels that form the house's exterior walls.

The trailer is parked on gravel inside the house, with a vapor barrier underneath to prevent the creation of moisture in the rainy season. Neatly aligned concrete blocks form a walking path next to the Airstream, and the family plans to put some plants in this area in the future to have a nice green area inside their home.

The inside of the trailer is still a work in progress, but the family is already using it as their sleeping quarters. Unlike the other rooms in the Casa Luna, which all boast large glazing, the bedrooms are more private and intimate this way. The daughter's bedroom is where the trailer's dining area used to be, the kitchen counters are now used as desk space, and the parents' bedroom is at the rear, where it used to be during their travels, but it's now much larger because the bathroom is no longer there.

It's worth mentioning that the couple repurposed many of the items that used to be in the Airstream travel trailer, including the induction cooktop, the kitchen copper sink, the Nebia shower system, and more. The whole house is powered by a solar system (800 watts of solar power feeding 500 Ah lithium batteries), and the couple is conscious about their resource consumption.

The whole idea of moving to this small village in the middle of the jungle was to live in a tighter connection with nature and give their daughter the opportunity to experience the beauty of a place where animals and plants live harmoniously together.

In terms of pricing, the couple paid US$130,000 for half an acre of land in the jungle and spent about US$70,000 for building the house. If we add the cost of the Airstream, which was about US$55,000 to buy and renovate, they constructed their little piece of paradise for a total of US$250,000, which is far lower than the average home price in the United States.