Totally customized 2 week family trip to Costa Rica (10 Jul - 23 Jul)

Costa Rica | Jul 10 - Jul 23, 2022

A large hotel, with beautiful ground and great facilities - multiple pools, 3 restaurants including a sushi bar, it's own crazy golf course and monkey trail. Rooms were not the biggest but adequate and well equipped. Small balcony, looking onto the courtyard. A wonderful local beach, Playa Biesanz which is walking distance but quite a steep walk. We felt the hotel was very security conscious, all entries and exits were questioned and confirmed for vehicles and pedestrian. Great ocean views. We loved the Pedro, the resident iguana!

Not the biggest hotel. More basic than the previous two we'd stayed in. We ended up being allocated a room without air con although it did have a fan. The hotel room was quite small but adequate. Storage was a bit of a challenge in that the hanging space was limited, within a short cupboard where my husband was not able to hang his shirt up without being crumpled. We had an issue with our plumbing which was quickly rectified. The grounds were very well maintained with beautiful planting. The hotel had a covered pool area with a good bar, a large jacuzzi and a large fire pit with seating which were popular in the evenings. There was a short walking trail around the grounds and plenty of outdoor seating, which I made use of to compensate for the smaller rooms. It's the only hotel out of 5 that had a menu option for breakfast, which was lovely.

Lovely hotel set in a lot of grounds. I like the lodge arrangements that was separate to the pool and restaurants. Good choice of restaurants, we particularly liked the Italian, the Sushi bar and the snack menu which was offered during the day. There was plenty of choice for breakfast and the service time from 6:30 helped with several of our early morning excursions. We preferred the evening meals from the other restaurants on site. There was a mix up upon checking where my acceptance of an upgrade for one of the rooms turned out to be a change the hotel had made, reducing our 3 room requirement to a single room which was upgraded to the Master Suite. Whilst this did come with a double room, it would not have worked accommodating with 2 families, 7 people. The hotel did insisted that we had to settle for this arrangement as they were full, fortunately KimKim were already on the case and by the time we went back to reception after assessing the room. Arenal Springs did provide us with another double room which we made work. That was an unfortunate start to an otherwise wonderful stay at Arenal Springs. We all loved the daily towel displays and chocolates and the Master Suite was luxurious with two in-room jacuzzis powered by Hot Springs, an indoor and outdoor shower and a hammock with a view of Arenal Volcano.

Good hotel, room size and facilities as you'd expect of a large chain.

Cristal Ballena is one of our favourites on the trip. The hotel was fairly small therefore an intimate feel. It was tucked away off the main road and had amazing views, floral, fauna and wildlife. We got best close up view of a sloth of the whole holiday at Cristal Ballena. The staff were attentive, the food was good. We had dinner at the hotel on all 3 nights we were there. Rooms were of a good size, with air con. We had a balcony with a view into the the hotel grounds, swimming pool, the ocean in the distance for incredible sunsets.

A great adventure with a relatively small group. We were rewarded with sightings of plenty of dolphins and a turtle, even though the whales didn't make an appearance on that day. We liked the way the guide was in communication with all the other boats out with the same purpose so if one boat spotted wildlife, the others would rush to the same spot so others could also. It brought an additional element of excitement to the tour. We particularly loved the way the tour started and ended, where the passengers had to enter the boat from the beach rather than a jetty and surfing the waves to get back onto the beach! What fun. The fresh fruit was a nice touch.

Thanks Alain and the other guides for a wonderful experience. We saw lots of wildlife, had enough freedom to go at our own pace although there were some quite competitive kayaks :). We appreciated the food at the end of kayaking.

Thank you to our guide Phillipe, we thoroughly enjoyed the tour. We learnt a lot about Costa Rica's eco system and climate. The transfer was a little confusing, as it was a bus full and no communication about where we had to go at the beginning so we joined the main queue, along with the other bus loads. However, all was clear when we got to reception. We were assigned Phillipe as our guide. It was really busy at the time so Phillipe suggested that we did the bridges backwards, ie. from 8 to 1 to avoid the crowds. That worked really well.

Thank you to our wonderful guide, Carla for spotting all the wildlife (we don't know how you manage to see some of the well camouflaged insects and animals), flora and fauna and particularly for help us take some tremendous photographs through your binoculars with our smart phones.

We spotted 7 in all, two and three toed sloth. We also saw plenty poison dart frogs, a Jesus Christ Lizard, howler monkeys and a tiger heron. Thank you to our knowledgeable guide and the local spotter who'd spent hours before tracking down the animals.

3 star, not because we didn't see as much as we'd like but because our guide whilst informative was less conversational. Again, he tried to avoid the crowds and the searches felt a little desperate towards the end. That said, we did enjoy it and managed to capture great photos of a glass winged butterfly, pit viper, hummingbird amongst others. Thank you for providing torches.

Thank you Franklin, we believe he's one of the best. We were entertained. The teenagers even enjoyed the singing and the dad jokes ;). Hot and humid but we really enjoyed it. Franklin kept a good pace, although he did say at the beginning that we could ask him to slow down if we'd need him to. The heavens opened when we got to the thermal springs and for the most of our time in the springs but we enjoyed the experience nonetheless.

This was never going to be our favourite activity, as a group we're not experienced, therefore I don't review the horse riding part. The 3 star review is because of the mismatched in expectations around the La Fortuna Waterfall and optional opportunity to swim. We didn't expect this to be a hike (at least 30 mins) down steep steps (and back up for the return) to get to the waterfall. We were prepared for a short walk but not this level of difficulty. The walk also didn't bring us to the waterfall, whilst it was visible at the end of the walk. For those who had opted to swim, they can cross the water with a further short walk to get to the waterfall. For those who had opted not to swim, there was no way to get to the waterfall and there was nowhere to stand/sit and wait for the rest of the part. We collectively felt that this detail need to be reflected in the activity description.

What a finale activity for us. Once again, our guide was brilliant, knowledgeable, full of humour and chat thank you Martin. We had to do a little bit of work but not a lot given the flow of the river. Our activity was made some what more exciting by an unplanned rescue of a couple of stranded kayakers (both were rescued, unharmed and laughed about their experience).