Nature Experiences in Costa Rica

Miller Contreras, co-founder of Guanadreams CR, leads most nature days himself. He has more than 20 years guiding in Guanacaste and over 30 years working in tourism, is certified in first aid and CPR, and works out of a genuine commitment to protecting the forests he grew up in.

When he is not available you are with one of our certified guides — each of them has worked this province for more than ten years, and several keep public birding records running into the hundreds of species logged across Costa Rica.

Your guide, your vehicle and your day are yours alone — we never merge your group with another family's booking.

Some of the places we go are public, and we would rather tell you now than have you find out there. A national park has other visitors. A hot spring has other guests. And on the Palo Verde wetlands the boat may carry a few other families, though your guide stays with you the whole way — if you would prefer the river entirely to yourselves, a fully private cruise can be arranged in advance for an added cost.

What is never shared is your group, your guide and your pace. If you want to spend forty minutes watching one bird, that is what the day becomes.

Yes, and usually a great deal of it. Every one of these days delivers animals — the forest here is full, and our guides know where to look.

If there is one species you are hoping for, tell your guide before the day starts. He will build the route around it, and most of the time that works. Wild animals keep their own hours, so the last word belongs to the forest — but the odds are heavily in your favour, and they improve with somebody who has spent twenty years learning where to look.

A sloth barely moves, so you never find one by catching movement. You find it because after twenty years the canopy has a shape you know — and something up there does not fit.

There is no bad month, only different ones. In the dry months animals concentrate around the water that is left, which makes them easier to find. In the green season the forest is loud and full — nesting, fruiting trees, migrants passing through — and the light is better for photography.

Most visitors are told the green season is the season to avoid. For wildlife it is often the better half of the year. Here is what each month actually looks like.

Half-day experiences sit within about an hour of Playas del Coco. Full-day ones run roughly an hour and a half to two and a half hours each way.

Monteverde and Arenal are three and a half to four hours each way. We tell you that before you book rather than when you are already in the car.

We move, we don't cancel. Guanacaste holds several different climates within a couple of hours' drive: when the coast is wet, the dry forest inland may be clear; when the lowlands are hot, the rainforest is comfortable. Part of what you are paying for is somebody who knows which direction to point the car that morning.

Rain also tends to help. Frogs call, birds feed low, and the forest smells like something.

Because you are not splitting a bus with twenty-nine other people.

On a group tour the price per person is low because the vehicle, the guide and the whole day are divided among a crowd. That crowd is also what you get: a fixed departure time, a fixed route, a fixed lunch hour, and a guide whose attention is spread across thirty travelers.

For wildlife that difference is not only comfort — it changes what you see. Thirty people make noise, and animals leave. A small group moving quietly finds things a bus drives past.

With us the vehicle is yours, the guide is yours, and the day bends around what you came for. If the light is good you stay longer. If somebody is tired you head back. Never a shared bus, never a stranger's schedule.