This guided garden tour surrounds you with native tropical flowering plants and trees as you hike to 5 beautiful waterfalls. You’ll see monkeys, wild cats, exotic birds, and snakes as La Paz Waterfall Gardens is also a rehabilitation center for rescued wildlife. This is a unique opportunity to see in one place the amazing flora and fauna that makes Costa Rica so awe-inspiring.
Your day will begin when you are picked up from your hotel and driven through strawberry fields, coffee plantations and cattle ranches that are strung across the Central Valley. Upon arrival at the La Paz Waterfall Gardens, your bilingual guide will introduce you to how the property became available for people and animals alike to enjoy. Included in the day’s journey is a delicious buffet lunch.
You’ll leisurely hike along the winding trails as your guide leads the way through this beautiful paradise, stopping at platforms to see each waterfall. You’ll visit a variety of rescued animals and birds safely housed in simulated natural habitats throughout the property. Your guide will point out any visible native wildlife too, living freely in the area, including interesting insects with their clever camouflage.
The main attraction of the Gardens, are the 5 breathtaking, cascading waterfalls. This series of waterfalls is closest to San Jose as well as the most accessible waterfalls in Costa Rica. The largest, called “Magia Blanca”, sits up at 120 feet and can be viewed from a wooden platform that allows you to take photos while standing underneath the waterfall!
Many people expect to see monkeys while on their Costa Rica vacation and this is a sure way to see them as La Paz Waterfall Gardens is also a wildlife sanctuary. Several species of indigenous monkeys living here were rescued and donated by the Costa Rican Ministry of Wildlife. This governmental agency helps to fund rehabilitation centers for injured and mistreated wildlife. At the Gardens, you will likely see both the White-throated Capuchin and the Black-handed Spider monkeys in the Monkey Pass portion of your walk.
You’ll see jaguars, pumas, margays and ocelots while stopping along the way at the Jungle Cat House. It is a rare occurrence to see these elusive felines within the wild especially as they are nocturnal, so this is an excellent opportunity to get to see them. In 2016 Costa Rica outlawed zoos and placed all the zoo animals in rehabilitation sanctuaries.
The outdoor hummingbird garden will provide you with lots of entertainment watching these colorful creatures buzzing around. Twenty-six species have been documented feeding here. As highly socialized birds, you can feed them straight out of your hand. There are special times in the morning and afternoon when you are allowed to feed the birds a special bird food provided by the Gardens.
You will also visit a huge bird sanctuary, serpentarium, butterfly conservatory, trout and frog pond as well as tour the beautiful flower gardens. If you are an orchid lover you won’t want to miss the orchid house.
After working up an appetite you’ll be treated to a buffet lunch in their award-winning restaurant. You can take this time to enjoy resting and reflecting on all the beauty surrounding you. You may wish to bring extra spending money to purchase alcoholic beverages, or souvenirs from the gift shop.
This tour includes a bilingual nature guide, entrance fees, lunch and transportation from Alajuela, Escazu, Heredia, and San Jose. One way transportation to La Paz Waterfall Gardens takes from 1.5 to 2 hours depending on the location of your hotel and local traffic conditions.
Combined time of guided garden tour, lunch, and round-trip transportation is typically between 6 and 7 hours. Please wear comfortable walking shoes and bring your camera, sunblock, insect repellent, rain gear, and extra spending money to purchase souvenirs if you’d like.
If you love Nature and want to experience Costa Rica’s natural wonderland, this is definitely the place to be.
The La Paz Waterfall Gardens Tour - Expediciones Tropicales is available from Alajuela, Alajuela suburbs, Escazu, Heredia, and San Jose
3 and up
Latitude: N 10° 12' 16.01"
Longitude: W 84° 9' 43.13"
07/25/2022
Good guide on bus with interesting information about the surrounding area. The whole garden area was incredibly beautiful with fabulous animals and great displays. The lunch was the best on the whole trip. Amazing!! The waterfalls were gorgeous. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone. On the downside, the bus was delayed, and extremely LONG!! We were all tired and it seemed to take forever to get back to the hotel.
02/07/2020
Beautiful, and senior friendly for seniors who can walk stairs. The ride pick up at the bottom was very much appreciated.
08/21/2019
Excellent tour... Informative.. Love all of it.
06/22/2019
An amazing Experience.
The guide was brilliant and extremely knowledgeable.
03/01/2019
Our tour guide was great and very honest.
01/31/2019
It was a beautiful place to visit.
01/16/2019
La Paz was fine but the travelling was not.
It took us 3 hours to get to La Paz and 3 hours to get back. We spent over an hour in the morning picking people up and also dropping them off. The tour company needs to consider the customer experience rather than the profit margin. The Government needs to sort the roads and traffic out.
01/19/2017
The LA Paz Waterfalls was beautiful, the guide was very good but did rush a little through the park.
12/05/2016
this tour actually turned out to be an all day excursion. To start we had 3 van transfers before arriving at La Paz waterfall. On the return trip dropping people off at the multiple hotels made for an extremely long day. The excursion took a total of 10 hours start to finish. when this was suppose to be a 1/2 day excursion. La Paz was very beautiful definitely recommend seeing. The lunch provided was great.
11/14/2015
this will always be my memory of Costa Rica. I think this experience summed up what Costa Rica is. I loved this activity!
12/30/2014
Wish we had skipped this one - logistics were terrible. Tour was late picking us up and the ride to the first stop took longer than advertised. First stop was a roadside store. We didn't see any purpose for stopping here other than to get us to buy stuff from the store. We were here 40 minutes when the guide announced that there was not sufficient room on the bus that would take us to La Paz. We were given a choice to wait for another bus with no estimate on timing, or to return to our hotel. We chose to go back to the hotel.