Costa Rica trip, Mireille Champagne (from Canada) - March 12, 2010
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Hola Mauricio.
We are slowly settling back into the routine here in Nova Scotia. So here is our feedback which you can feel free to use on your website if you wish.
Car rental:
we were very happy with the service from the Adobe car rental agency. It was helpful to have the car delivered and picked up at our hotel. We were pleased that they waived the extra driver fee because we had a longterm rental and they also included a cell phone for the duration at no cost. Our vehicle, a Daihatsu Bego was perfect for the different road conditions we encoutered, from the new highway to very steep and rough roads. It performed beautifully, was very good on gas mileage and we would recommend it to anyone wanting a rental car in Costa Rica.
Hotels.
Selva Verde Lodge. We enjoyed this hotel very much and our regular room was fine. We would recommend to anyone booking this hotel NOT to pay extra for the cabins away from the main hotel as they are not as nice as the regular rooms and there is not really any more privacy as the several cabins are quite close together and right by a large muddy puddle which encourages mosquitoes! Thanks Mauricio for helping us sort out that situation. We were very happy that the hotel gave us complimentary dinners as a compensation for moving to regular rooms. The food at the hotel was delicious. Theirs was the best breakfast "Gallo pinto" we had in CR!. Their italian restaurant La Terraza was terrific! Lots of great bird and monkey watching!
Escape Caribeno, Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean side. A nice little bungalow set among about a dozen others. Good breakfast, attentive staff. One minute from the beach and a few minutes walk from the town. If your clients are afraid of dogs, the owners here have two enormous mastiff dogs in the main building!
Ciudad Perdida, Cahuita. This was a beautiful bungalow, set in a nice garden. Very friendly and helpful owner. Highly recommended. It is only minutes walking from the Cahuita National Park, but away from the main town road. Thanks for suggesting this Mauricio. Tell all your clients about it; they will not be disappointed!
Espino Blanco Lodge, North of Turrialba. OK Mauricio: when we arrived, the friendly greeter said with a smile: "Did your travel agent mention that there is no electricity in the rooms?"....."But we do have hot water!"...If we had known that, we may have decided not to go there. But we are very glad that we did! This was the most remote place we stayed at and it was a good experience for one night. They are well organized and we didn''''''''t miss the electricity at all. The cabins are set apart from each other and have battery-powered lanterns, small battery-powered lights (with extra batteries!) and water heated with gas. No problem! The road to get there was quite bad and we would never drive it at night (definitely 4-wheel drive vehicle). Their restaurant (which does have power) was very good and they have a coati mascot! They have several hiking trails.
Orosi Lodge, Orosi Valley. Nice room; second floor with good view. Definitely best view from this floor. Small inn on a road at the edge of town with everything within walking distance. We had really good coffee here and the best bread in CR! Delicious breakfast! Friendly and helpful owners who directed us to a very interesting tour of a nearby organic coffee plantation ( where we got lots to bring home!). Close to Lankaster Botanical Gardens also well worth a visit.
Hotel Savegre de Montana. A very beautiful place but the road to get there is the worst we drove in CR! The guide book says it is a very steep 7km road down to the hotel and they mean it! Our faithful car''''''''s brakes started to smoke halfway down and we had to take a ten minute break to let them cool down...The rooms are in bungalows spread throughout nice gardens right by the river. Very pretty. They apparently often have bus tours (those bus drivers should all get a medal...) and there were a couple of bird-watching groups on the night we were there. This means buffet-style dining which was fine but is not our favourite. The hiking trail map is very confusing...Some of the trails begin AFTER you climb a "multi-purpose trail" (namely a small road) of about 800 meters high. I loved the trail to the waterfall where I saw a resplendent quetzal!
Pura Vida hotel.
Too bad they don''''''''t deal with travel agencies as we would highly recommend this hotel. The owners are very helpful and knowledgeable. It is very convenient to the airport; their bungalows and gardens are beautiful, and the breakfasts delicious. The dinner we had there was one of the best we had in CR!
Tours and attractions.
Poas Volcano. Our first day and we felt the altitude a bit, but not enough to stop us from walking to the crater lake which is very beautiful. The main crater is almost always clouded over as it was when we visited, but that is nature!
La Paz Waterfalls. We saw only two of the falls because of the damage from last year''''''''s earthquake had blocked the trails to the other ones. The walk in the rain and the falls were great! The butterfly garden was nice. We didn''''''''t really like the other parts of the place because they reminded us too much of a zoo: we didn''''''''t go to see the jungle cats. I hated to see the monkeys in captivity, as there are so many places in CR where you can see them in the wild. I was glad we didn''''''''t stay at the "Peace Lodge" hotel, as, although it seemed to have all the facilities and more, it wasn''''''''t our type of place...it felt a little "hokey" to us.
Trimbina Forest Reserve Chocolate Tour. This was terrific and there were only the two of us with the very knowledgeable and friendly guide. It was our first CR guided walk and made an excellent impression. We were shown the whole process of harvesting cocoa and making it into chocolate, in the old indigenous way. There is a hotel on site and the bungalows looked nice; we would stay there. We brought home lots of chocolate which we bought at the airport because it would have all melted in the hot sun during the rest of our trip. Highly recommended.
Selva Biological Station. A three-hour guided forest walk. Excellent and extremely knowledgeable guide. Highly recommended. Saw lots of wildlife, including mating spider monkeys...
Cahuita National Park. All sea level walking. Beautiful trail of about 7-8kms from one end of the park to the other. We did the walk on our own and saw lots of wildlife. Highly recommended.
Guayabo National Monument. Very interesting and not crowded, probably because it is off the usual tourist route. When we arrived there were no more available guides, which was fine. We enjoyed the site on our own. People should not expect ruins like in Mexico, but well worth visiting. A beautiful, peaceful walk.
Lankaster Botanical Gardens. Beautiful; worth a visit.
Finca Cristina Organic coffee plantation, Paraiso. This was very interesting because it is a small scale plantation where they use different growing techniques from the usual large scale ones. Their coffee is all shade-grown under the canopy of other trees. Tours by reservation only. Highly recommended.
Manuel Antonio National Park, guided walk. We felt that a guided walk was the only way to see the abundance of widlife here and were not disappointed! The park guide we had was terrific and there were only four of us in our group. The beaches are beautiful. We wanted to snorkel and went out only once because the reef is mostly dead and the visibility poor.
This park is very crowded and the parking guys that stop traffic 5oo meters ahead of the entrance so that you will give them money (when there is parking available closer) are a pain.
As you know Mauricio, we spent the second half of our three-week trip at two houses that we had rented independently. One was in Uvita (also at the top of a bad, steep road...) and the other in Manuel Antonio. Both were very nice and, after all the sightseeing and travelling, a perfect way to spend the rest of our time in CR.
So Mauricio, thank you again for all your help and suggestions. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in your beautiful country!
Pura Vida,
Mimi and Dave
Costa Rica trip, Mirmiam MacMichael (from USA) - March 2, 2010
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Hi Mauricio,
Thank you very much for your help with our travel arrangements, we had a great time and the resort (Cariblue) was as you described, beautiful, everyone was very friendly and went out of their way to accomodate our needs, will contact you again for our next trip.
Thanks again,
Miriam
Costa Rica trip, John Blank (from USA) - February 16, 2010
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Hi Mauricio,
We were very pleased with the arrangements and enjoyed the trip. Please find the trip assessment below.
Jan 25 - Arrival into SAN JOSE
Hotel Britannia for overnight. The hotel was a little far from the center so it was not easy to get to restaurants. Service was good but not remarkable.
Jan 27,28 SAN JOSE / TORTUGUERO
Turtle Lodge Pickup went smoothly and the tour guide was excellent giving good commentary in English and Spanish to a mixed group. The hotel was good and the excursions on land and boat were very good and enhanced by the good tour guide.
Jan 29,30,31 TORTUGUERO / SAN JOSE/Alajuela
Buena Vista. The hotel was wonderfully located and very central for our excursions in the area. Service and food were excellent.
Feb 1, 2 SAN JOSE / PUERTO VIEJO de SARAPIQUI
Selva Verde Lodge Excellent! Rooms good, local guides good.Hotel facilities, free and paid for tours were very good with lots of birds spotted, especially on the boat and coca tours. Only problem was our room was far from the main facilities, but close to the river.
Feb 3, 4 PUERTO VIEJO de SARAPIQUI / ARENAL
Arenal Kioro The hotel was a wonderful surprise in great style. The room faced the volcano but no spitting of the volcano. The hot baths were cold and the alternative offered by the hotel near town was only mildly warm. Service was very good in keeping with the style of the hotel.
Feb 5,6 ARENAL / MONTE VERDE
El Establo hotel. The last 40 km of the road here were really bad as was the road out. The hotel was very interesting with the grounds extending up the hill to their own cloud forest. Very nice setting.
Feb 7,8,9 MONTE VERDE / MANUEL ANTONIO
El Parador. Quite a grand hotel, enjoyed pool and looking out to the Pacific from the dining area. We had reserved an garden view room but opted to upgrade to an ocean view room. This made the experience much better. The setting of the hotel was delightful and we particularly enjoyed the dining room setting although the food was too salty for our tastes. The road for the last 2 KM to the hotel was particularly bad. The general location of Manuel Antonio was very enjoyable although the park trails were very crowed by 9am. Beaches were fine
Feb 10 MANUEL ANTONIO / JACO
Canciones del Mar Great location for hotel and quiet. Here we again had a garden view room on the ground floor, but for one night it was satisfactory. The town was not very attractive but the hotel has a simple charm and very good bird watching within the grounds. We were surprised by the very good dinner we had in their dining room.
Feb 11 JACO / SAN JOSE
Our stay at the Hampton Inn was unremarkable. The location was very convenient for the airport departure. No dining room, but hotel provided transportation to “Steak House” which was on the highway (noise) and near jets taking off.
Overall we were very satisfied with the arrangements and the choice of hotels
Please let us know which other areas you cover and perhaps we can work together next winter.
Kind regards,
John Blank
Costa Rica trip, Seth Swallow (from USA) - November 19, 2009
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Mauricio, you’re the MAN!!!!!!!
-AWESOME CAR
-AMAZING PICK UP AND DROP OFF SERVICE AT AIRPORT
A+++++++
Have friends coming down around Jan 07, 2010 and they will need largest Luxury SUV for week or so.
I’ll be back again shortly thereafter.
Best,
Seth
Costa Rica trip, Raymond Lewis (from USA) - September 21, 2009
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Hola Mauricio-
Christian at Adobe took very good care of us...he walked us through the process from the point he picked us up at the airport to the point he handed us the keys and said ''have fun''...then greeted us warmly and with a smile upon our return to his office two weeks later to dropped off a very dusty car.
We certainly took mainly of the ''roads less traveled'' but always knew where we were with the guidance of the GPS. to my surprise driving certainly takes much longer (often twice as long) than we had anticipated to travel from point to point...through driving ourselves provided us the opportunity to take so many more roads and see so many more sights.
Thank you again for your last minute help and guidance!
Ray
Costa Rica trip, Jeff Setecerri (from USA) - April 20, 2009
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All worked out well - the company was nice and they were accommodating.
Appreciate your help. Just forwarded this email with your contact info to a friend, who hopefully will be calling you as she goes to Costa Rica in a couple of weeks.
Costa Rica trip, Gulchin Ergun (from USA) - April 2, 2009
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We are still in Tamarindo and are having a great time! We loved both Arenal and Monteverde. The Arenal Inn was convenient and nice. The Trapp was good too (although the food was not great.)
Thank you for helping us. We will definitely use you guys again and we will definitely return to Costa Rica. Pura Vida!
Costa Rica trip, Madeline Redfern (from Canada) - March 20, 2009
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I just wanted to say that I was very pleased with my car rental. I appreciated being picked up at the airport and driven to your rental office.
In addition, the familiarization overview of the car along with explanation about what to do in the event of flat tire, accidents and insurance requirements, removing all possessions from the car, use of GPS (absolutely invaluable), etc.
In the end, I felt adequately prepped when I drove off the lot. I was able to get to my designations without problem. In fact, with the choice of vehicle and GPS, I was able to drive about as if I was a local. The rental fee was also very reasonable.
I would absolutely use your company again and would recommend it to anyone traveling to Latin America.
Costa Rica trip, Judi Dagan (from USA) - March 6, 2009
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Hello Mauricio,
We arrived home safely and are getting back to our regular routine. We had a wonderful time in Costa Rica. My only regret is that we could not stay longer to explore more regions of your fascinating country: perhaps some day we will return.
The voucher system worked out fine: but having a cell phone is absolutely essential.
We planned to stay 3 nights in the 3 different chosen destinations . However none of the hotels we contacted were able to accommodate us for 3 nights (only 2) which meant finding another place, packing up and making the moves. The jeep was excellent and got us comfortably across some difficult dirt roads.
We want to thank you for the correspondences and conscientious effort in helping to make this a successful and memorable vacation.
Judi and Eli Dagan
Costa Rica trip, Mark (from USA) - February 9, 2009
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Hello Mauricio,
I have returned home from the wonderful vacation that we booked. We wanted to let you know that we had an excellent time, all of the arrangements were top notch.
The transfers were promptly on time, which led to a stress free and enjoyable vacation.
Thanks,
Mark and Alesa Tagtmeyer
Costa Rica trip, Patricia B (from UK) - December 1, 2008
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At Latin Discover it's all about location. The right room in the right hotel with a beautiful view. Keep it up Mauricio, you've done us proud to date!
Patricia Birchley
Costa Rica trip, Nicholas B (from UK) - August 21, 2008
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Mauricio We had a wonderful time and would definitely like to visit Costa Rica again. We mainly followed your suggested route with some variations. The car was very good, the GPS was essential as was the cellphone.
The hotels we enjoyed were: Gran Hotel San Jose, The Sapo Dorado in Monteverde - probably our favourite The Samara Pacific Lodge - run by a very nice French couple Rancho Casa Grande in Quepos The Quality Inn in San Jose Thank you Mauricio for all your help it was a wonderful holiday for all of us. best Nicholas
Costa Rica trip, Janine M (from USA) - August 13, 2008
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Mauricio, We had a wonderful time in Costa Rica. The transfers were great: we loved Eli (not sure if that is his name but the first driver) we also liked the second driver but we spent more time with Eli. They were both very cautious and friendly. The Arenal Springs is a very nice place to stay and to start the trip. I loved sitting on the porch and watching the hummingbirds. The concierge was very helpful and the b'fast was good.
We went to do the zip line and for the people who did not zip we just hung out at the pool and had some cocktails. We all enjoyed it. The Buena Vista is something else, beautiful and fun. The Villas had everything u could want and a beautiful view. The concierge was a great help you just call for service and he sends the bus to take u where u need to go.
We went to Manuel Antonio Park and we went out on a boat, we had massages in the villas and just hung out at the beach watching the monkeys. The breakfast was really good at the Tulamar.
Thanks for all you help. We all loved it an everyone wants to go back someday. I am hoping u can give me some ideas for next years trip, i here Belize is beautiful. Where in Central and South America can u recommend for Americans to travel? It is going to be my other sisters birthday, she will be 60. Janine.
Costa Rica trip, Kathy C (from USA) - August 7, 2008
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Mauricio Tuvimos una vacacion fantistico!!! Tortuguero was the best! The people at Pachira lodge were wonderful, especially Manfred. They were knowledgeable, showed us so many beautiful plants, insects and animals. Manfred was especially good with my youngest, Jessica. The tours all went smoothly and we loved it.
The canopy tour was so much fun. The trip along the canal was awesome and we were treated to the spider monkey show, jumping from tree to tree. Mornings began very early with the howler monkeys greeting at 4 am! The black sand beach in the village was beautiful. The turtle tour was exciting for Stefani and we saw a green sea turtle laying many eggs and then bury them. The walk there was a little difficult as the landscape was uneven and it was extremely dark but I think it was worth it. Stefani was thrilled. Jay loved the rhinoceros beatle he found and held it for all to see. He even put it on me for a picture.
He and Jessica also found some really big blue crabs and yellow crabs at Pachira Lodge. Jess made a friend from Spain and neither spoke each others language but children always find a way to communicate and they had a great time swimming and playing together. The spiders everywhere we so colorful and big!
Volcano Lodge was beautiful. We loved the landscape and the rooms were also roomy and had a fabulous shower area. The pool was also very nice. My children loved the swim up bar area. (Jess thought it was "cool" to order her lunch and eat it in the pool.) The trip to the volcano was awesome. The tour guide, Roy, was also really great with Jessica and made her a grasshopper he made from leaves! We saw hot lava rocks coming out of the volcano and lots of gasses. It was amazing. The climb was a little difficult but lots of fun.
Tabacon Springs was also a lot of fun and the food there was the best of the vacation. Roy showed us how to take pictures through the binoculars. Tulemar was also very nice. I had thought that we had a 2 bedroom bungalow but we managed with the day bed in the living room. The views from our bungalow were breath taking and we even found a small anole (lizard) in our room that hopped from my hand to my face to Jessica's shoulder. That certainly made everyone laugh.
We had fun in the (Manuel Antonio) national park as well, seeing the white faced monkeys, raccoons, lizards, birds, and crabs. The beach at Tulemar was a little rough so we had Jessica wear her life vest but she and Scott really enjoyed riding the waves. We used the free kayak also. Stefani and I explored among the many rocks and found lots of beautiful shells and coral. The transfers all went smoothly and everyone was on time. Only one driver did not speak any English but we managed with our limited Spanish.
All in all, it was a wonderful vacation. The weather even behaved for us. Not too much rain. We will have many memories and hundreds of amazing pictures. Thank you so much for all of your help in planning this vacation. Sincerely, Kathy
Costa Rica trip, Edward W (from USA) - July 28, 2008
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The trip went beautifully and we had a great time, in spite of all the rain. Having the rental car for a few days was a terrific bonus. The hotel accommodations were mostly fine. Especially the one at the volcano - that place was spectacular!
All your arrangements worked out great, and we felt very well cared for. Your country is beautiful. The volcano at night was as spectacular as the hotel. We took hundreds of photos of the scenery and wildlife.
The canopy walk and the zip lines through the jungle were fantastic fun. Thanks for all your help on a great vacation. You'll be hearing from me again in the future! Regards, Edward
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