Nature Lovers! This tour will take you for a boat ride on the Río Frío, starting at Los Chiles, near the Nicaraguan border.
This river is part of the Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge – a Ramsar site- here you will find one of the most diverse flora and fauna habitats in Costa Rica.
Along the river you can see lots of birds like the snake-bird, herons, cormorants and animals such as: howler, spider or even white face monkeys, three-toed sloth’s and some reptiles like caimans, Jesus Christ lizards and turtles.
Posted By : Happyanderl
A beautiful tour. 2 hour drive in a van. Short stop at a bridge with large iguanas. Then we went on the boat. It can hold about 30 people. The trip on the picturesque river takes 2.5 hours and the guides make a great effort to find every animal, no matter how small, and give you enough time to take photos. We saw 20 different species of birds. But also monkeys, caimans and turtles. Everything is very relaxed 😎 Lunch was good and plentiful 🐊☀️🥳
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Posted On : 2024-05-16 20:12:12 
Posted By : Iyesha_C
The guide for this tour had a great energy, upon pick up. He is very knowledgeable of the area, giving a lot of information on the agricultural aspects of La Fortuna, and the provinces. He provided so much good information on the wildlife we were able to see, and assisted in getting great pictures, as well. Our group was small, which I think added to how good the tour was, with Martin.
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Posted On : 2024-05-08 14:29:41 
Posted By : mendip_7
It's a long trip with maybe a little too much information about agricultural crops on the way, but an interesting stop at a bridge where iguanas live, and coffee and toilet break before the boat tour. It's a really scenic river, and we saw many birds, various monkeys and a baby crocodile. We were lucky to have a group of only 4 people so we could move around the boat and get really good views. Both the guide and the boat driver were great at spotting things. Lunch after was adequate if not exciting. Around 7 hours all told.
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Posted On : 2024-03-20 03:48:32
Posted By : Steve_L
This was an amazing explorer for us. You definitely need to use a guide when you go on this type of excursion. Roy was able to find things that we would have never seen. I could not get close enough with my iPhone to take great pictures but afterwards Roy shared the pictures he took with his professional grade camera and sent them to us in WhatsApp. On the way back I mentioned that I would love to see a sloth. I don't know how he did it, but just before we got back to our hotel he stopped the driver, had him turn around and pointed out a sloth that was more than 50 meters away tucked under branches. I will never understand how he was able to find it. If you take this trip hopefully you will get Roy, he was fantastic
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Posted On : 2024-02-01 16:08:29
Posted By : Beixian_X
Our guide Melvein(hope I got it right!) is super knowledgeable and funny to interact with, our commute became very interesting because of him thank you so much! The lunch was amazing too I had extra scoops of bean sauce and me and my friends finished all our food and all enjoyed them very much. We identified 21 species of birds along with monkey and Carmen crocodile and a water snake, the monkeys almost hijacked our boat so that was really unique experience!
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Posted On : 2023-12-31 18:38:18
Posted By : Ron_N
Javier was the best! He was very informative. The boat driver Eagle Eye spotted so many things. Birds, Sloth, Monkeys and Caiman, even babies. Lunch was great!
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Posted On : 2023-05-05 13:03:37
Posted By : The5MRanch
We didn't actually do this specific trip, but a very similar one and it was certainly a great day trip. Our guide, Gabriel, was great at spotting wildlife as was the skipper on the boat. Certainly a must do from Arenal if you have the extra day.
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Posted On : 2023-04-30 18:19:37
Posted By : tanjac007
This was a great tour. We got picked up from our hotel and driven to the main hub in Los Chiles, that did take a while bout our guide/driver kept us entertained with stories of Costa Rica and his knowledge about certain animals and the environment around.
Once at the dock we got on a flat bottomed boat with about 15 other people, wasn't a huge group which was nice. Straight out of 'pity' we saw herons, egrets and a few king fishers.
The boat trial down river was very serene. Our guides pointed out many many birds which I can't remember the name of. Do remember the potoo we saw that was special.
We saw cayman, tortoises, more king fishers, a 2 toed sloth, howler monkeys and white faced moneys who were very inquisitive.
After the boat trip we went back to the main hub and enjoyed fresh fruit and some nice local cuisine before being driven back to our hotel, we got back to La Fortuna around 3pm.
A note on some of our boat comrades - there will always be one person who is so excited about spotting something that will will shout! Please remember to be quiet as it is a nature reserve.
Also there were people with big cameras and as soon as a bird or other wildlife was seen they forgot about decency and we were literally barged out the way by people of giant camera lenses as they 'got their shot' - Please remember there are other people on the boat too!
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Posted On : 2023-04-01 13:16:15
Posted By : Gail_B
Great experience, knowledgeable guides, small group, wonderful lunch! We seen more birds than we expected and were given a list by our guide to ensure we could match our pictures with the names. Our boat captain was very knowledgeable of the Rio Frio and spotted so many things we would have missed. Many Caymans, 2 & 3 toed sloths and 3 different kinds of monkeys. Thank you Andreas and David for a wonderful day!!
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Posted On : 2023-02-04 12:44:37
Posted By : X3486XKwilliamb
Kristel Rojas-Leon was SUPER! Plesent,knowledgeable, patient with guests of all levels of expertise, excellent english, an asset to the tourism industry!
Bill Bishop
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Posted On : 2023-01-30 20:30:09
