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Arenal and Manuel Antonio Tour Help
Hi,
We just booked a trip to Costa Rica to San Jose (1 nt), Arenal (3 nts), Manuel Antonio (3 nights) and San Jose (1 night) and are very excited. We will be there over the Easter week so I am concerned about booking must do tours in advance. I thought that I was set on the Tabacon hot springs but just read about the Eco Termales Hot Springs. Which would you recommend? Can anyone recommend a combined Arenal park/ hot springs tour? Also, can one visit and tour the park at Arenal on one's own? I have also read about the Cano Negro tour. Is this a tour that is suggested other than a canopy or hanging bridges tour in the Arenal Park? As for Manuel Antonio, what tours are recommended? We would like to see the park. Again, can this easily be done on one's own? We would also like to do Level 1 or 2 whitewater rafting...a VERY calm river. Any recommendations? Thanks. |
For Arenal, I recommend the following: Sky Trek (ziplining), Eco Thermales, & La Fortuna Waterfall. Hanging bridges is a nice hike / walk but I would put it lower on the "Must Do" list. For Manuel Antonio, we did the day raft trip on the Naranjo (class 2/3). Very fun!
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In MA, if you want to zipline I liked Canopy Safari. For horseback riding, Finca Valmy. I would get a guide at MA, you'll see a lot more.
You can go to Arenal and hike around by yourself, yes. You may also want to look into someone like Sunset Tours who will pick you up and guide you around there. SkyTrek is a blast if you're looking for thrills and Hanging Bridges is nice for a quiet peaceful walk and beautiful scenery & views. Have fun! |
You can certainly walk through the park without a guide, but they know where all the good stuff hangs out. With their viewing scope, you will be able to see frogs, sloths, monkeys, crocs, insects, etc. You can also take pictures thru their scope. Our lense was too large to work with our guide's scope, but we still got zoom photos of sloths climbing up trees. Without a local or guide, you'd have a difficult time knowing what to look for.
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We've done both Tabacon and Eco Termales, and we liked Eco T a lot more. Tabacon overcharges and is overly crowded in my opinion. Eco Termales limits entry to 100 people and serves a great chicken dinner. Good drink prices too, which are served on the honor system. Tabacon is a little flashier, water slide, loud music, etc. Both are nice, it just depends on what you're looking for.
We did the combo Sunset Tours volcano hike and Eco T hot springs. Cano Negro is a must in my book; you will see a lot of wildlife there that you probably won't see in the rest of Arenal. We loved our Sunset Tours Cano Negro trip and have done it twice. For zips, I would go with Sky Trek in Arenal. It's known as the biggest and the best. The Hanging Bridges is a pretty hike. If you're pressed for time, it would be okay to skip it in my opinion. You probably won't see much wildlife there. In MA, we hired a guide and saw a lot of things we would have missed. The beach inside the park is really pretty, so bring your swimsuit if you want to swim. We did a sailing snorkeling tour, but the snorkeling was pretty bad, so I would do the Damas mangrove tour. You'll see a lot of wildlife in MA park. Most popular option for rafting is the Pacuare; most tours leave out of San Jose for it. Look at Rios Tropicales or Desafio if you're interested. Congrats on booking your trip! |
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Thank you so much for the replies so far. Based upon what I have read, I think that I would like to do the combined hike/Eco-Termales tour. Question...if I use Sunset for this, will it include the dinner at Eco-Termales too? I read a post on here that said that it did not include the dinner at Eco but that they were given dinner elsewhere.
Also, if we decide to do the whitewater-rafting while in MA, where should we go? We need a level 1 or 2 site. Thanks. |
Our combo did include dinner at Eco T. We had a choice of beef or chicken, and it came with a lot of nice sides. We thought the chicken was great. They have specific dinner times, and we had to pick which one we wanted. Eco T is also family owned, which I liked.
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For a Manuel Antonio guide, I can highly recommend Juan Luis Brenes. I think his email is [email protected].
Here's a web site: http://juanbrenes.blogspot.com/ We arranged to meet Juan near the entrance to the MA park. Very nice guy, knowledgeable, has a great scope to see wildlife, reasonable prices. Google his name for other comments. In Arenal, we found Sky Trek very professional and safety conscious. Be sure to make a reservation if you are going independently. There's a good little snake zoo up the road from there about 10 minutes (past Sky Trek in the little town). Be sure to get the guide service there -- our guy was terrific, spoke better English than I do. We bargained down the price a bit because we had a group of seven. We loved Hanging Bridges and did see some wildlife. It's also just cool to walk on the bridges and see the volcano from there. You definitely don't need a tour to go anywhere near Arenal if you have your own car. It's all pretty easy. Toad Hall, a restaurant along Lake Arenal on the East side, is also quite good. Excellent California-style food, an American owner, attached to an eclectic art shop. |
Yes, Juan Brenes is a great guide in MA and he will take you to the mangroves for a unique experiences feeding a family of monkeys and spot animals in the park that we would have never spotted. He also took us to a very inexpensive tico restaurant that we ended up eating everyday we were there, it was really good and he was great company while we ate with him.
As for Arenal, I really enjoyed the Arenal Observatory deck, Sunset's Cano Negro tour and hanging bridges. We sat at the observatory all day watching lava rocks come out of the active volcano. You can have drinks on the deck and meet fellow travelers as well as walk around their beautiful property. We went to the hanging bridges by ourselves, you don't need a guide. If we went with a guide, we would've missed out on the howler monkey that jumped from the tree to the hanging bridges just a few feet away from us. Have a great time! |
Thank you all so very much for your help....I've printed it all out.
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We visited MA with my sister and husband. My sister and I treked up and down thru the jungle...my wife and my sister's husband went to the beach.
My sister and I saw a couple of birds....that's it..no monkeys or any other wildlife. When we arrived at the beach to meet, my wife was playing with monkeys and there were other animals just walking around looking for food. I'm not sure you need a guide :) |
We have always used Amigos del Rio for our MA area whitewater rafting.
Class II-III (amigosdelrio.net) Tourism is so down in CR, that all published prices ARE negotiable. |
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