Carara National Park & Puntarenas Highlights w/ Lunch & Boat Tour

Carara National Park and Tarcoles River Cruise. Thumbs up. The cruise lines prices were outrageous, and the excursions were much shorter than we found online. Decided on ThumbsUp tours. It had great reviews and very good prices. They originally said there was no tour due to lack of interest, but if I could drum up another 4 people, they could run a tour. I was able to find enough people, so we had a tour with 8 of us, plus the guide and driver. Were met on time out side the port area by Mario, our guide of the day. Once he had corralled all of us, we climbed into his 10/12 passenger van (there were only 8 of us, so it was very comfortable). The back seats were elevated, which I like, so I didn’t feel like I was sitting in the trunk. I actually preferred that row. Our driver was Jose. Headed to Carara. Costa Rica Highway Dept is doing work on a bridge just before the entrance of Carara, and delays can be very long as they shut down one lane of traffic at a time for an extended time period. We just squeaked in before they closed the lane down. Mario sweet talked the lane operator/ controller of the cones. (Others, we hear, got stuck on the way back for LONG times - like over an hour -, so be prepared if you are on a tour in that area.). Upon arrival, we were told that the main entrance of Carara was closed dues to a tree across the path (?) And we had to use a different entrance, another trail, which was narrow, winding, muddy and rocky - not at all like the one we expected, which was supposed to be handicap accessible and flat. Those who wore boots or enclosed sandals (not flops!) made out the best, as the water was sometimes flowing across the path. We were definitely in the jungle… butterflies, Army ants, centipedes, chicken feet trees, quite a few bird species. No snakes, although we we warned to look out for them. And some amazing spiders. The mosquitos were much less present than we expected - a blessing. About a half hour in, we all decided that it was too muddy and getting worse, and that perhaps it was time to move on. We did see some great birds, including hummingbirds, a toucan, trogon and flycatchers. It was a little later in the morning, so there were not very many. Mario trained his scope on them if he could and we took pix through the scope. A short van ride took us to the Tarcoles River Crocodile Safari boats, where we saw not only some amazing huge crocs, but amazing birds, Jesus Christ Lizard, even Scarlet Macaws flying overhead. Some roosted in an area where we were able to get some pix. Mario was excellent, fun and informative. The included lunch was at Le Congo restaurant, - a beautiful open air restaurant with immense thatched type roof, dry and comforting as the rain teemed outside. Lunch consisted of arroz y pollo, beans, salad and French fries. Delicious. It was pouring, and the restaurant had great overhangs for cars to pull into so people didn’t get wet. Quite large and interesting. Very close to the restaurant we stopped at a souvenir shop - El Jardin, which was a lovely higher-end souvenir shop featuring craftsman doing their carvings, chocolate tastes, coffee tastings and selling some of the nicer clothing and other type of souvenirs. Not your typical stuff. On the way back, since several people in our group had requested seeing monkeys, Jose pulled off the highway onto a bumpy narrow dirt road and went for what seemed like a long time, where Mario thought he could find some. Sure enough, there were a bunch of howler moneys way up in the trees, all hunkered down due to the rain. But Mario pulled out his scope, let us see, and took pix for all of us through the scope on our own phones so we could have actual pictures. So everyone got to see what they wanted to see. Only downside of the trip was the bridge repair traffic, which delayed several groups of people by several hours. It caught us, but only for a half hour or so. Got back to the ship with two hours to spare.

We used Thumbs Up Tours on a recent cruise visit to Puntarenas. Unfortunately, we visited during a major holiday period and encountered horrendous traffic problems, which resulted in many of the ship's own tours being abandoned. We had booked the Crocodile river cruise followed by the Cararas National Park walk but had to abandon the walk because of delays caused by the traffic. It probably wouldn't have been very enjoyable, though, as the rainy season decided to start while we were having lunch, and the downpour was torrential. These were circumstances outside our guide's control, though, and he and our driver did their best under the circumstances. The river tour was amazing and the lunch was very enjoyable. We were also taken to see howler monkeys and macaws.I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this company but would suggest avoiding Costa Rica national holidays.