CathyF

I have been looking at the different Cano Negro tour companies and I'm not sure which to pick. It seems like a great guide is expecially important for this trip. We have children, so that could make a difference.

I see Sunset Tours gets great reviews and Luis is supposed to be a great guide so I am thinking of going with them.

How about Sunrise Tours or Canoa Adventura? Any others you can comment on? Thanks!

Jeff_Costa_Rica

Sunset pioneered the Caño Negro tours, and I think they do a fantastic job. I have gone on Canoa Aventura's canoe tour of Caño Negro and enjoyed that very much, but haven't done their standard motorized-boat tour similar to Sunset's.

volcanogirl

We went with Sunset Tours and would highly recommend them; so much fun and very informative.

cmerrell

I think hipvirgochick might have gone with Aventuras and liked them. We used Sunset Tours and were very happy with our Cano Negro excursion. Our guide and shuttle driver were both excellent!

Hi VG,

Back from Boston? Hope you had a terrific weekend!

shillmac

Our guide was Walter (Sunset Tours). We had a great day. During the travel time, he shared with us the story of the day Arenal erupted back in '68, when he was a young boy. Very interesting.

volcanogirl

Hi, cm! We just got back last night - we loved Boston. I needed a little wildlife fix, so we went whale watching and saw tons of humpback whales - it was so amazing. For wildlife of another sort, we went to the Sox/Yankees game!

Cathy, I would just go ahead and book with Sunset Tours; they get nothing but rave reviews. Our guide was so good about getting everyone involved in spotting the wildlife, I think your kids would love it.

ktny333

Can I drive to Cano Negro myself and join a tour there?

volcanogirl

I don't believe so - when we did it, we were the only people on the river. Our boat was just waiting for us when we pulled up, and everything was booked ahead and prearranged. There's not really a set area where you could just walk up and join a tour that I'm aware of. The tour leaves from La Fortuna in a shuttle bus and drives a couple of hours to get there; they also provide a nice lunch; we had arroz con pollo, black beans, fresh pineapple, etc. Sunset Tours did an outstanding job.

cmerrell

I'm glad you had a great weekend, VG. Sounds like a terrific way to celebrate a birthday!

I'm a bona fide whale watching junkie, btw! I've been known to plan entire vacations around it! My last 4 trips before CR involved 2 visits to Alaska and 2 to Eastern Canada (primo whale watching spots), so I can completely relate to your excitement at seeing the humpbacks. Hope you got lots of good tail fluke photos! The baseball game sounds very fun as well...

Ktny,

I suppose if might be possible to drive to Los Chiles and find a Cano Negro tour, but its a very small town and didn't appear to be much of a tourist hub so I would research pretty carefully before embarking upon such a plan. If you plan to visit Arenal where tours are so readily available, I can't imagine any benefit to making the drive yourself.

shillmac

Glad you had a good time, vg! Sounds fun to me! Boston's such a great place to visit.

volcanogirl

cm, I loved the whale watching. I've wanted to do it since a friend got married in Maine several years ago, but we were outside the season then. Now you're giving me more trip ideas! shillmac, one of the first things we saw in Boston was a UT flag - it was hanging up outside a bar we walked by! I thought about you and our previous conversation!

shillmac

Oh man, at first I thought you said, "it was hanging UPSIDE DOWN outside a bar. . " I started to get all excited, thinking there were some OU fans in the Boston area, doing what we do best, turning those horns upside down!

Guess I'd better tone it down. . don't want to be eating TOO much crow in a couple of weeks. . and hoping not to have to eat ANY!

volcanogirl

I know - our year took a big nosedive this week - I think Fran should be very worried....

shillmac

I should say! Are you Tech or A&M? Who would have thought it? Lots of upsets went on this weekend.

MRand

CathyF - I thought about what you've asked here too when we took the Sunset tour to Cano Negro this summer. When we went on the Sunset tour, we turned off the main highway onto a dirt road a few miles south of Los Chiles. We then had a couple of mile drive to the El Caiman restaurant on the river, where we caught our boat and then returned for lunch at the end of the tour. I seem to recall there were small signs at the turnoff from the main highway "advertising" Cano Negro tours, and the El Caiman parking area was certainly large enough to accomodate rental cars, so I suppose it would be feasible just to drive up.

However, after driving in our rental car from Alajuela to La Fortuna and then all over the Arenal area for a couple of days, I frankly enjoyed the break for a day with someone else doing the driving. That allowed me the opportunity to enjoy watching the people/scenery/countryside, read some in my guidebook (and even take a brief nap on the way home) without having to worry about driving my family off the road.

MRand

I also have a confession to make. I didn't do enough reading about Cano Negro ahead of time and mostly relied on the high recommendations here on the Fodors web site in deciding to go on the spur of the moment our third day in the Arenal area. I was just assuming that the "Caño" in Caño Negro meant that the river was in a canyon - not a huge canyon, mind you, but just a river flowing with high cliffs on one or both sides. Of course that was not what it was like at all, but still very enjoyable for us. I think "Caño" in this context means something like "drain" -- not a swamp, but just a delta-like setting.

Linda137

The Foder's guidebook says that the mosquitoes are voracious and that guests need to bring jungle juice on the Cano Negro tour. Can a person wear thin jungle pants and thin long sleeves without roasting?

I recently read that only one tour company actually goes into the preserve. Does anyone know if most of the current tour companies take guests to the same areas or should we be reviewing exactly where the boat will take us? The length of the tours I've found varies from 3 hrs to a full-day but maybe that is because there are stops planned on the longer tours? We want to do the Cano Negro tour this November.

cmerrell

Hi Linda,

We weren't bothered by insects at all on our Cano Negro tour, which is not to say that this would never be an issue... We visited the first week of December last year. I took a day pack along to store camera, insect spray, sun screen, etc...

I don't remember what I wore that day, but I took mainly long or capri length pants. I focused on light-weight, man-made, quick-drying, moisture-wicking types of fabrics and was pretty comfortable everywhere we went. The Arenal area was even a bit cool at times while we were there (I made good use of a fleece pullover).

I had also read that few tour operators actually enter the official Cano Negro reserve boundaries, but stay along the outer fringes. I don't know why this is so. Sunset Tours took us on a leisurely trip on the Rio Frio. I couldn't tell you the exact route, but I can tell you that it was an excellent, worthwhile experience. Our guide was very knowledgeable, and we saw lots of wildlife (monkeys, caimans, lizards, turtles, bats, birds of all kinds...). We left our hotel at 7:00 a.m. and got back around 3:00 p.m.

volcanogirl

shillmac - Aggies!

Linda, we did not have a big problem with mosquitoes in Arenal or Cano Negro. We wore bug spray each day and didn't get any bites. Arenal was comfortable during the day and actually cool in the evenings. I wore capri pants and t-shirts during the day and was fine, then switched to long sleeves in the evening.

shillmac

VG--didn't mean to offend! LOL! I thought so, but was afraid to assume too much! It's a touchy subject (certainly here in the OK state!).