You’re welcome
Our whole vacation consisted of 3 main parts - a week in Orlando spilt between Universal and Disney, the Gate 1 Costa Rica tour, and 2 weeks on a Southern Caribbean cruise. While the cruise was the highlight for my son, Costa Rica was the highlight for my husband and I. I’m going through a small bout of post-vacation blues at present, and I keep looking at photos from CR wishing I was back there. It really was very special.
I think for us, the star of the trip was the itinerary. I was looking at the ABD Costa Rica tour the other day and see that it’s about 5x more expensive per day than what we paid. While people can spend their money how they want - what does strike me about the tour is the itinerary. If your priority is some outdoor adventure tourism followed by a bit of rest at the beach, it would be fine. I think that if your priority was like ours (wildlife), then the ABD itinerary simply wouldn’t fit the bill. It needs to swap either/both locations with the likes of Tortuguero or Manuel Antonio. Even the cloud forest of Monteverde had more fascinating wildlife (IMO) than Arenal as it’s where we saw all the coatimundi (so cute) and a stunning Resplendent Quetzal.
That’s just my 2 cents though as I realise that everyone’s reasons for travelling are different.
Some more pics incase anyone is interested (and because I’m reminiscing):
We were lucky witness 3 different Jesus Christ Lizards (including this beautiful Emerald Basilisk) actually run across the water.
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Blue jeans poison dart frog. There were a lot of these gorgeous little creatures on the trees outside our cabin in Tortuguero.
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American crocodile. This guy was huge. 3-4 metres long.
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The Respeldent Quetzal. I wish I could have got a better pic, but with all the plant life in the foreground, it was really hard to focus on the bird. Google has better pics that showcase the quetzals glorious tail.
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Coatimundi. I love these animals so much. There was a whole family (including babies) roaming around the coffee, sugar and cacao plantation we visited in Monteverde.
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Red-eye tree frog. So beautiful.
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I loved that on this trip we were able to see 4 of the 6 species of Toucan present in Costa Rica.
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Seeing fur de lance on a private night tour was a little bit scary as they’re ground dwelling snakes, but we loved seeing all the aborreal snakes during the trip such as the boa-constrictor and many different coloured eyelash pit vipers.
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This is a 2 toed sloth. The last pic was a 3 toed.
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We saw 2 species of Macaw - the scarlet macaw and Great Green Macaw
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