Costa Rica_Tortuguero

Unfortunately, Tortuguero was a disappointment for us because it's a total tourist trap. First we had to pay $80 for the boat trip, then the hotel, and then they tell you that at 6 p.m. you'll be locked in and locked off the beach because you can only see turtles laying their eggs with a guide, which costs another $38 per person. On top of that, you can't choose the time and then you have to go either at 8 p.m. or 10 p.m. and you basically have to be ready on call. 8 p.m. might have been possible, but 10 p.m. was no chance for Lea, plus it's pitch black and she stumbles too, so we considered just one of us going with the other two children, but the whole cost thing annoyed us, because nobody tells you beforehand, and once you're there, most people do it because they don't want to miss anything. The whole thing is set up like this (we spoke to Spaniards who have done it) that a guide goes out to look for a turtle and when he finds one, the people are taken there and are only allowed to go onto the beach at that spot, can take a quick look and then have to leave and are not allowed to take any photos so as not to disturb the turtles, even without a flash. It's understandable that you shouldn't disturb the animals, but the fact that they make such a profit out of it is crazy.

We decided against it, especially since there were no concessions for disabled people or at least for those with children at 8 p.m. etc. In addition, most people there were rather unfriendly and more or less hostile to tourists. We didn't like that at all and we went out for a nice meal in the evening, had breakfast there in the morning and then went back by boat. If someone had told us that beforehand or we had found information about it on the Internet, we certainly wouldn't have done it.

On the way to Tortuguero and the way to Fortuna, our next destination, we saw banana plantations and how they transport the bananas across the road using a kind of elevator, a sloth in the pouring rain on a power line and another on a barbed wire fence (they get away from there on their own) and the typical cows that originally come from India and are very undemanding and robust.