Steve & Sally, April 2018

Once again our huge thanks to you and to Jose for facilitating such a fantastic trip for our family. As you know we travelled with our daughter Chloe (5) and son Austin (2.5) as well as my sister in law Meg for most of the trip and our itinerary centred around 2 main destinations; the Rainforest, Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui (at Selva Verde Lodge) and the Volcan Arenal (at Arenal Observatory Lodge). We had just been to my brother’s wedding at a resort in Mexico and were looking forward to a week of family-friendly adventure, nature and relaxation prior to heading back to Australia. Our guide Jose was such a warm and knowledgeable guy and we are very grateful to him for taking such good care of us all. The children have talked about him non-stop since getting home! Without a doubt the largest stress to travelling with young children is the fact the main timetable is their timetable. Austin still has a lunchtime nap and to have the flexibility of planning our activities around these things (-as well as combining his nap with some of our own R&R!) was fantastic. Jose was always very mindful of helping to shape a daily itinerary that gave us the best experience possible at a pace that didn’t erode the children’s enthusiasm or energy! We will happily recommend you to all of our friends and family. Costa Rica is a beautiful country and your company helped us to get a great little view into that on our 8 day trip. Please feel free to use as many of our comments and pictures as you like (and Ive put some highlights in dot points below),
Kind regards
Steve, Sally, Chloe and Austin (and Meg)

Experiences we loved;

Boat ride seeing wildlife, Caymans etc in Puerto Viejo.
Wildlife park/ reclaimed conservation spot – and especially its butterfly enclosure – at La Fortuna de San Carlos.
All of the great small restaurants that Jose took us to. Especially Arroz con Pollo and all the Casados. Kids especially loved the abundance of pineapple juice!
Your recommendation for the pineapple danish.
Proyecto Asis. We did the tour and then the feeding at this rehabilitation centre and it was a definite highlight and we would highly, highly recommended it to animal/ rescue lovers.
The girls did zip lining at Arenal and loved it.
The Observatory Lodge – we stayed in White Hawk Villa and it was superb. Great having Jose to kindly pick us up and take us to the lodge for dinner. We had some incredible views of the volcano both from the Villa and the Lodge. Also enjoyed having a spa and swim and all the walks. Oh! and the waiters getting us all up to go outside and see a Margay cat mid-meal – was amazing!

Experiences we didn’t like as much;

It is a very minor criticism and by no means would we not recommend the place (the caretaker, food, all staff and the walks were fantastic) however the La Casona at Rainforest Lodge is really close to the highway, and despite visually seeing rainforest all around you, the sound of the highway and all of the trucks using their air breaks frequently punctuated the nighttime ambience. Again, its a minor criticism and from the looks of things this is the closest of their accommodation to the road.
We cannot fault anything else!