Anna, April 2024

We had an amazing trip with Global Family Adventures. It was the perfect combination of nature and beach for 8 days in Costa Rica. Our guide, Dauren, was so good. At the end of our trip, I joked with him about wanting to hire him for all our family vacations in the future!!

We started at Rincon de la Vieja Volcano area with our first night at Buena Vista del Rincon enjoying the sunset on the deck and the next morning a tractor ride to the hot springs. It was this incredible oasis in the forest. The accomomdations are a bit rustic but the hot spring are well worth it! Breakfast was really good too.

We moved to Hacienda Guachipelin for 2 nights. It is a beautiful setting with lots of hiking, adventure activities and a wonderful hot springs as well. We learned most activities have a morning and 3pm booking times. The sun sets around 6pm every night. Dauren found us lot of wildlife on the hike in the national park. We enjoyed hiking to waterfalls, the zipline and tubing. All of the guides for the activities at the resort were sooo good. They were capable of helping all levels of experience and made everyone feel comfortable doing the activity.
It was so nice to have a guide to drive from place to place. Everything was well arranged with room for flexibility with the guide along the way.

We ended at Samara beach at Villas Kalimba. This was was a perfect place to stay. So close to the beach, grocery store, restaunts and shopping. It is very hot at the beach and was so nice to come back to the shaded grounds and perfect pool to relax. The staff was great. We did surfing with Pato’s. Our instructor was fantastic. He was able to make all of us feel comfortable in the waves and have fun! Pato’s allows you use boogie boards and surf board for the next 5 days once you have taken a lesson. We also did a boat trip with snorkel option with Samara Adventures. Snorkeling is not great in this area but we were happy we went on the boat trip. It was a chance to see the area from a different perspective and we saw some dolphins and sea turtles. My teenagers enjoyed jumping in and snorkeling even though this area is cloudy a lot of times.

We found that everywhere took credit cards or American cash easily. I would recommend to bring waterproof phone case (one with string for your neck) and to have $1 and $5 for tips.

Highly recommend Global Family Adventures and the guides. It was such a smooth, stress-free way to travel.