Hello: Can one book a mangrove river tour right from the pier? we prefer to go a little later than when ships tours assemble so can we tailor something like a casual city tour/mangrove tour with a private operator from the pier? Bear in mind one of our party has a bad knee so too uch walking is out. Thank you. Larry

You might want to interview and arrange a tour guide in advance, rather than taking your chances with a walk up??

Friends used http://www.destinationcartagena.com/privatetours/ in October, I went elsewhere, but they were pleased with the service. There is also a "Dora" who was spoken about highly.

Thank you. I'm looking into that as well. I'll try the site you posted.

BQ: The site provided is for Cartagena only and we aren't going there unfortunately. Any recs for Puntarenas? Thank you.

Go to www.cruisecritic.com. There is a lot of info on Puntarenas, Costa Rica under the Ports of Call section in the "Boards" forum.

When we stopped in Puntarenas, there were many taxis and even tour operators at the pier. Many used OkeyDokey Tours (www.okeydokeytours.com) and where very pleased.

I did post there too and will check. Thanks for the info about whats available at the pier. That helps. We looked into Okey dokey BTW and unfortunately found several negatives about its owner, Charlie Soto and those negatives were pretty consistent. That is there was a pattern of complaints so we decided to use another source. Larry