Which local tour operator from Puerto Caldera?

I'm planning on getting quotes from a couple of local tour operators for our day in Costa Rica in April.

We'd primarily like to see the monkeys up close and maybe a river cruise, not bothered with zip-lining, beach or shopping.

I've seen that various companies offer trips that look interesting:

Gio Tours

Arenas Travel Day tours

Tratursa

Odyssey.

Does anyone have any recent positive or negative thoughts about any of these? or any other tips or advice that might help?

Thanks in advance!

I'm planning on getting quotes from a couple of local tour operators for our day in Costa Rica in April.

 

We'd primarily like to see the monkeys up close and maybe a river cruise, not bothered with zip-lining, beach or shopping.

 

I've seen that various companies offer trips that look interesting:

 

Gio Tours

Arenas Travel Day tours

Tratursa

Odyssey.

 

Does anyone have any recent positive or negative thoughts about any of these? or any other tips or advice that might help?

 

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

I'm looking for help on Puerto Caldera and saw your question. Can't believe nobody bothered to reply to you!

Did you find a good tour? If so, I'd be very grateful if you could let me know what and with whom.

Many thanks.

I have been to port of Caldera twice and it was almost 3 years ago when I went for my one week windstar sail in Costa Rica, I found several excellent reviews of Alvaro and his local family-run business odysseytourscr.com and hired him for the rides back and forth the airport and ended up having him for my tours as well since his tour operator is fully certificated and authorized to access the ports with his very nice new Mercedes Benz van and others don't have those permits so you need to pay an extra taxi to take you off the port, they don't let you just walk out since Caldera is a big commercial port full of containers and trucks so it is not safe. He took us on tours out of Quepos port and Golfito, he is incredible spotting wildlife and a profesional tour guide very knowledge of the nature and history of the country. I'm coming back this year to another port of Costa Rica now on the east coast and I already asked Alvaro to meet us there for another wonderful tour, he runs tours all over the country since he also took us to the volcanoes from San Jose city.

We had a port call in Puntarenas last month on our Panama Canal cruise. Six of us on our Roll Call had a fabulous, all-day excursion with Gio Tours. Lots of wildlife, a really interesting and wonderful day. I recommend them highly.

If you go to my review thread at the link below, I cover our day with Gio Tours (plus lots of photos) starting at post 31

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2456255