Miller Contreras

Born and raised in Guanacaste, I've spent my life learning to read this landscape.

Its birds, its forests, and the rhythms that tell you where the wildlife will be. I've been in tourism in Guanacaste for over 30 years and guiding for more than 20, and I'm a naturalist guide.

But the certificate came late. Long before it, there was the forest. I didn't learn this work from a classroom — I learned it from years of walking these trails, paddling these rivers, and watching the same treeline until I understood who lives there and when they show themselves. That's what I bring to every tour: not a script, but a lifetime of paying attention.

Birds. Costa Rica holds hundreds of species, and reading them — a call in the canopy, a flash of colour at the water's edge — is what I love most about showing people this country. Photography came from the same place: the urge to hold on to what the forest shows you, and to help my guests see it too.

When you travel with Guanadreams, you're not booking a seat on a bus. It's a small, private operation — my business partner Karol and I built it in 2014 — and you're in the hands of a naturalist guide who knows this place personally: sometimes me, sometimes one of the guides I've trained and trust. Either way, the standard is the same. If there's a species you're hoping to see, tell your guide before you start, and we'll do everything we can to put you in front of it. The one promise we'll always keep: you'll see wildlife. Which wildlife, in the end, is up to the forest.