Jan 29, 2013 COSTA RICA TOUR SUMMARY

January 20-29, 2013 CARAVAN COSTA RICA NATURAL PARADISE TOUR - SUMMARY

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We just returned from Costa Rica after taking a tour with Caravan Tours.  We had a group of 8 folks from BC and Alberta (3 had to cancel just prior to departure).  The Costa Ricans all speak Spanish, and all take English at school as their first foreign language.  However, if they have not taken additional schooling after high school their English may not be good enough to understand (but probably better than your Spanish!)  The literacy rate is over 96% and the Government mandates education for all and will even put1 teacher in a remote area for1 student if necessary.

The Costa Ricans are physically a fairly small race, with distinct differences in how they look from area to area.  They love their country and are rightfully proud of it, it is a beautiful country, and proud of the fact that they have such a wide bio diversity which they are trying hard to protect.  Tourism is extremely important in Costa Rica.  Dry Season December to April, rainy season May - November.

We had no problems while travelling apart from 2 or 3 folks with an upset stomach for a couple of days - either from something they ate or the much higher volume of fruit and fruit juices than they would eat at home.

This bus tour, with a driver and excellent Costa Rican guide with perfect English, well educated and very experienced, is a great way to see much of Costa Rica from the Caribbean to the Pacific - starting and ending in the capital city of San Jose - excellent value, highly recommended.  Be prepared to spend lots of time on the 50 passenger luxury Mercedes bus.  Caravan changes and assigns the seats daily and everyone moves around the bus during the 10 days.  This tour is so highly recommended that at some hotels that we stayed at there were 4 groups at a time - 2 groups on day 1 and 2 groups on day 2.  In addition, there were other groups at other hotels at the same time!  We went in January - the high season.  Caravan will run a tour every day of the year of they have enough clients and have been in business for over 60 years.  They also run tours in Panama, Guatemala, USA and Canada.  They have stopped their Mexico tours due to danger problems in Mexico currently.

This tour is put on by CARAVAN Tours USA. It is 9 nights and includes all airport transfers, large bus transportation (up to 45 passengers per tour), National Park admission fees, 2 boat transfers in and out of Tortuguero National Park, Turtle Sanctuary Film in Tortuguero, 2 boat safaris in Tortuguero, suspension bridge hike in Arenal, BALDI Arenal hot springs resort visit, Las Chiles boat trip, boat trip in CARARA Biological Reserve, 9 nights hotels and 3 meals daily.  The pricing is excellent value (around $1300 USD including taxes based on double plus $40 gratuities for driver and $75 gratuities for the Guide).  Note that CARAVAN will only handle their tour with not a single change - if you require additional hotel nights you must book it yourself, they also handle airport transfers only on the day that the tour starts and finishes.  You must book your own air.

The hotel accommodation is top notch - 4 to 5 star, with more basic accommodation in the Tortuguero National Park on the East Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica.  Over 9 nights we stayed in 4 hotels for 2 nights, this helped make the tour more relaxing and enjoyable without the need to change hotels every day.  All 3 meals every day were self serve buffet style with the exception of the lunch at POAS volcano (we had a choice of 3 different entrees) and the farewell dinner on the last night in San Jose.  As far as buffets go the food was good with a similar variety every day; breakfast everywhere had the least variety but an "eggs cooked to order" station available at every hotel.  The best buffet by far was the J W Marriott in Guanacaste - this hotel also had the slowest coffee poured every breakfast and here you had to buy coffee $5 cup if you wanted it at lunch or dinner.  A very nice touch was the special surprise of a small selection of free cocktails from 1 to 4pm provided  Caravan at the J W Marriott in Guanacaste -this was our "relax day at the pool" at the end of the tour.

Costa Rica is quite a small country - you can travel from the Pacific Coast to the Caribbean Coast in one day should you need to, crossing the Continental divide.  The main roads and highways are well paved but too narrow for the large trucks and buses to pass each other - many times we had sudden braking as we came around a corner to see another truck os bus coming towards us on our side of the road, or us over the centre line.  Costa Rica is a spectacularly beautiful country with amazing vistas no matter which way direction that you look.  It is a country with lots of volcanoes, including two active volcanoes, and is quite mountainous - so the driving can be slow and with lots of up and down when crossing from East to West, or vice versa where you will always cross the Continental Divide.

The temperatures and weather vary greatly - from very hot and dry in the East Guanacaste area (where lots of the beach resorts are located) to wet and humid in the Eastern Caribbean area. The dry season is December to April and this is the high season for tourists.

70% of the country is designated as National Parks - but we saw no mammals except for quite a lot of monkeys (spider monkeys, howler monkeys. and 1 capuchin white faced monkey), 3 raccoons and 1 white nosed coati (Northern racoon).  Like most folks, we think of Costa Rica having lots of cats: jaguars, pumas, ocelot, jaguarundi, tapir etc but we saw none. We were also expecting to see lots of brightly coloured birds that you always see advertised for Costa Rica like the scarlet macaws and toucans.  We essentially saw none except for two toucans high in trees  (one in Tortuguero and one at the Manoa resort in Arenas) and no scarlet macaws at all on this tour.  Costa Rica has recognised its; unique and varied biodiversity but only after much of the country has been inhabited or logged.  After  Tortuguero was logged it has taken only 34 years for the rain forest to come back but it appears that it will take much longer for the animals to come back, with the exception of monkeys which are there now.

The CARAVAN tour is exceptional value for money but make no doubt it is a bus tour with 40+ passengers.  The guests on our bus, all from USA and CANADA, were pretty good, average age appeared to be late 60's with some in their 50's and 70's.  Getting on and off the buses was slow, some folks waiting until the last minute to get their stuff together holding up everyone else - as always long lines for the ladies' bathroom at every stop! We appeared to have only two smokers on our bus which was great,  - always getting their last drag on their cigarette before frequently being last back on the bus.  Most mornings were a fairly early start (715 to 815am) which noone had a problem with.  Most days required long drives due to the narrow winding roads, so when changing hotels we never arrived before 330pm - Caravan always included bathroom and lunch breaks, and a boat ride or hike to break up, and make the most of, the day.

Our Guide ELSON, had 20+ years experience, impeccable English and well educated as well as well experienced.  Elston and an easy manner, big smile, fun and made sure every single individual knew exactly what the time and details were for every activity, break, or transfer.  The microphone in the bus was top quality and very easy to hear every word being said at the back of the bus - Elston gave us lots of information about Costa Rica, where we were travelling, politics, culture and history, as we drove.  There is nothing more that I could have asked of Elston - and this was with his wife expecting their third baby (a girl) to be delivered the day after we returned to San Jose!

SAN JOSE gets a bad rap in every information book or web site that we looked at.  Mostly for being dangerous with theft rampant.  We took care to not wear any jewellry or go downtown after dark.  Imagine how surprised we were to spend two days in San Jose and love what we saw!

The Nacional Theatre is one of THE best and most elaborate theatres in the world and still in use!  You must take the $7.50 guided tour fee - a great tour, so much interesting information and you can only go as far as the lobby if you don't take the tour.  We also took the 4pm walking tour around downtown to see all the old and current important buildings with Jeffrey (also a Guide at the Nacional) - meet in front of the Nacional Theatre at 4pm, $10USD per person.

The underground Museum complex next door (called the Gold Museum) has an amazing amount of information, artifacts, displays on culture, history, art, architecture - well worth the $14 admission fee.  Give yourself 2 to 3 hours here.  The red taxis are everywhere and very reasonable.  They have meters and typically cost us between $8 and $12 for the few miles from downtown to the Barcelo San Jose Palacio hotel depending whether there were 3 or 8 of us.  Although we did NOT take any public transportation we understand that it is very cheap and that you can get anywhere in the country by bus for as little as $2 to $3.

Everywhere in the country will take USA dollars, although occasionally in smaller areas you may be given the local currency COLONES in return - approximately 500 to $1 USD.