Tortuga Island Bliss! 🐢☀️ - Just got back from the most amazing day trip to Tortuga Island with Pura Vida Expeditions! Seriously, this was paradise! Crystal clear water, incredible snorkeling (we saw SO many fish!), and the island itself is just stunning. The crew was awesome - super friendly and made sure we had the best time. Lunch was delicious (and they had fresh fruit!), plus we had a perfect little private dinning spot on the beach. If you're in Costa Rica, DO THIS TOUR. You won't regret it! 😉

Swimming in starlight and zipping through the forest. - The bioluminescence experience was incredible! It's like swimming in starlight! The guides were very friendly and explained everything in Spanish and English. We watched a beautiful sunset and ate fresh watermelon and pineapple at Playa Muertos before it was dark enough to see the glowing algae. We did a zipline tour the next day, and that was also incredible. Extremely beautiful and exhilarating! Gravias to the team!

OK visit to Tambor area/islands - The day we took the tour (late December) was quite overcast so the scenery was not as beautiful as the pictures included on the tour page, but this is obviously out of the control of the tour operator, and we will try our best to not have the unfortunate weather influence our review. Also, the comments are not in the chronological order of the trip. The bioluminescence swimming (very cool) and time on the nearby beach with fruit and drinks were the highlights of the trip. The visit to Tortuga Beach was disappointing because of the large crowds and commercialization of the beach area ($8 chaise lounges for rent, multiple stores, places to buy food/drink - this is not associated with the tour operator but the island management) which take away from the exotic beauty of the beach. This would not be any different with any other tour group that visits Tortuga Beach (and it felt like EVERY tour company visits this beach at roughly the same time). The lunch was tasty at the floating restaurant, but the surrounding water was not very clean and the area felt rather run down (abandoned, rusting ship nearby). The visit to Spider Island is interesting, but you don't get off the boat and the monkeys are drawn to the shoreline by the tour guide throwing food on the shore. That visit was about 15/20 minutes. The snorkeling was OK - some colorful fish but a large number of the tours stop in the same area so somewhat crowded. As for the dock/boarding area - it is basically a large commercial fishing dock/pier (Spring of Tambor) with no dedicated tour facilities (e.g. building, bathroom). Parking can be an issue as there are no reserved spots for tour participants. We were met on the dock by our very pleasant tour guide and led to a rather simple but safe boat. Given the long duration of the trip, I would have expected many more facts from our tour guide about the area and what we were seeing. My recommendation would be to take a shorter tour focused on the bioluminescence experience and to get picked up somewhere else in the Tambor region if possible. All in all, it was an OK trip but maybe we had our expectations set too high and the weather certainly didn't help.

Watch out for the number of people on the boat - After talking to me about a ride with 4 people, and without warning we met with 13 people on the boat for a boating experience not so pleasant: the boat must do the cork on site during the time that each swims at night in the middle of the bright plankton (I specify that the same phenomenon exists in France); the sea was calm and yet after 45 minutes on site we are sick. Make sure you are not too numerous and swim with a swimming T-shirt because some animals sting superficially in the water Another private ride, this one, went very well