Generally speaking nearly all tours include round trip transportation to and from your hotel as long as the tour is available in that area. The tours we recommend in our vacations are all conducted by professional companies with appropriate certifications. We do however stress the importance of independent research as it is your responsibility to choose which tour you would like as well as the operator.
It is important to mention that with any adventure tour, there are inherent risks no matter how many precautions are taken. As an individual, you are responsible to decide whether you are willing to take that risk. With these risks also come responsibilities for the tour operator to set up proper safety standards and guidelines for rescue in certain situations. Due to this we need to know the following information in advance:
Please notify us if you;
a. Weigh more than 200 pounds and are going whitewater rafting, canyoning or horseback riding.**
b. Weigh more than 250 pounds OR have a waist size over 45 inches and are going ziplining.**
c. Have any pre-existing medical conditions or physical restrictions, limitations or impairments.
*Please consult with a physician prior to reserving adventure activities.
**We can usually make arrangements if we know in advance.
Tour operators retain the right to cancel activities for a number of reasons, which we have no control over. Reasons may include inclement weather, safety or operational concerns, emergency situations, minimum number of participants or operational fees not met, and a variety of other reasons. In most situations, tour operators will seek alternatives to cancelling altogether such as changing the time or date of activity when possible within your schedule. In some cases, they may seek an alternative operator of the same or similar standards. In cases of minimum number of participants or operational fees not met, by default, our reservations system charges the minimum amount to open a tour. This ensures you have better odds to receive the tour you want and are not met with surprise charges in the future. If you enroll for a tour that requires more money than the normal per person fee for the amount of people on your tour, you will be charged the fee to open the tour and then if others join, you will be refunded the appropriate amount.
Unless otherwise specified, all tours are shared tours. Private tours are usually available on request, but never provided unless it is specifically requested. Furthermore, private tours will always be referred to as "tour name - private tour". If the tour name in your itinerary does not include the term "private tour", then it is not a private tour.
Tour transportation is always shared. A tour is not the same as a transfer. Therefore, even if you have private transportation included throughout your itinerary, the pick up to the tour and drop off from the tour are shared.
There are a number factors that can result in a tour taking less time or more time than expected and for this reason, we do not list exact tour durations. Such factors include, but are not limited to number of participants, weather, water levels, tides, traffic, road conditions, location of hotel in relation to the activity, etc.. To put this in perspective, the location of a tour versus your hotel location and number of other participants can easily result in a total difference of 25% of the time for a half day tour.
All of these factors are out of our control and can occur with little to no notice. Until a solution is found to predict each of these factors, it is not possible to list exact, reliable tour times. It would simply be a disservice to attempt to do so as it would likely lead to problems with other plans or reservations.
Due to this, we, similar to nearly all other operators, go by industry standards. In Costa Rica, anything up to 4 hours is considered a half day and 5 hours + is considered a full day. Thank you for understanding.
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