Erwin Gonzalez

Good trip to a really remote area that many people don't get to visit. We had good guides who helped us see wildlife. We saw many monkeys and a sloth, also some really cool birds. (We hadn't seen these elsewhere in Costa Rica.) Only 2 drawbacks: at the start we were in a pretty big group which made it difficult to hear the guide; it's a 90 minute boat ride each way, which makes for a long day. Instructions said to bring bathing suit and towels, but we didn't actually swim on this trip. (There was a very short opportunity to swim in a pool in a stream, but nowhere to change from hiking clothes to swimwear.)

Fun to learn about 3 different products in a single tour. This was informative and interactive - we got to actually press sugar cane and crush/mix chocolate ingredients. The guide was fun and informative. The only downside was that we had a pretty big group (10-12), so sometimes there was side chatter and people who seemed to distract or slow down the group.

Great experience. Our guide taught us a lot about both the animals and plants/trees in the cloud forest. We saw many cool birds and trees, and even a couple of monkeys. Moved at an appropriate pace and got a good sense of the forest.

Fun way to see the rainforest. Our guide did an amazing job of finding wildlife we would have never found on our own.

We didn't really learn anything here. It was a big group (~20 people) and really just 1 big cooking station, so we ended up watching a lot and not doing much cooking ourselves. Everyone helped chop some vegetables and made our own tortilla, but not much else in the way of cooking. The menu.. Rice - we measured some rice and water into a rice cooker Vegetable saute - chopped a few vegetables, but that was it Beans - cooked ahead of time Chicken (main course) - cooked ahead of time. No information about how it was made, ingredients/seasoning, etc Tortillas - we got to make these, which was good Fried plantains - a couple of people (on the other end of the kitchen) fried these without the rest of us knowing/seeing anything about it. The food was decent, but overall we just really didn't learn much about the local cuisine and we didn't actually do much cooking for ourselves. (We've taken classes in other countries where we each had our own cooking station and made everything ourselves.) May be an okay activity for college-aged people or people just looking to fill an itinerary, but really not good for people know love to cook and want to learn.

Great tour. We were in a small group (1 guide, 4 guests), which made the walk really interesting - we had time to ask questions and have personalized experience. (guide told us that sometimes the have groups of 20... that may not have been as enjoyable.) We was coati, snakes, spiders, and learned a lot about the plants and trees in the rainforest. One downside - there were only 2 hanging bridges on our walk. Given that it was called a "sky walk", we expected that there would be more bridges than that.

Good overall. We were the only people on the tour, which gave us personalized attention. The hot springs were nice, but it would have been good to have more instruction about which pools to visit in what order. Dinner here was just okay - nothing wrong with it but also nothing special.