The Kayaking Adventure at Marino Ballena Park is an awesome half day adventure!
Round trip transportation times vary from 15 minutes to a little over an hour based upon whether you are picked up from your hotel in the local area of Uvita or from areas around Dominical and Manuel Antonio. You will be brought into the Marino Bellena National Park and your admission is included in the tour. Your guide will provide life jackets and paddles and explain the plan of activities yet to come.
You will be launching your kayak from the famous Whale Tail beach, named for its unique shape, looking exactly like the tail of the humpback whales that come here to breed twice a year. This rock formation emerges as a sandbar during low tide and hosts numerous tide pools. Convergent currents create the amazing geographic feature as if Nature were giving the whales a landmark to show them where to come.
Kayaking along the beautiful coastline we stop to snorkel the colorful coral reefs in search of tropical fish and other marine life. From here it is possible to encounter bottle nose dolphin, sea turtles or maybe even a whale sighting depending on the time of year.
After snorkeling, we will kayak a little more in the surf or along the mangroves where many sea birds build their nests. Also found in this area are monkeys, iguanas and red macaws.
Light snacks of fresh fruit will be provided and water will be available throughout the tour. It is recommended to wear water shoes on this trip as Whale Tail beach consists of a combination of small rocks and sand. Times of tours vary depending upon the time of low tide. The Park provides tide table information that may be useful to your vacation planning.
The Kayaking at Marino Ballena Park - Ballena Aventura is available from Dominical, Manuel Antonio, and Uvita
Latitude: N 9° 8' 43.95"
Longitude: W 83° 45' 52.98"
01/18/2022
The guides appeared not to know what to do - we cruised around, didn't stop anywhere on the water to go snorkeling or at least swim. We stopped by the Whale Tail, and I went to explore myself. The guides were friendly, but they didn't show much.
02/26/2020
I didn't realize the beach was so far away. My fault
12/30/2019
Marcos was a great guide! He was so great with our kids (9/11) we loved how relaxed the trip was and he gave us so much time and space to really make it what we wanted. The fruit and cold water was a great treat after hours in the salty reef. We also enjoyed the time we were given to spend on the beach and the ability to have lunch in town before we had a to head back to our hotel. It was so nice to see another one of CR's great national parks
07/05/2019
Please let me know the name of the town this was in! I don’t recall and would love to venture here again in the future. It was lovely and wonderful as we were the only couple in the tour. Our guide was patient, good natured, pleasant to be with. Snorkeling here was fun & got to kayak in the mangroves which was an added shady bonus.
04/16/2017
The company picked us up on time and brought us to the company. Our guide was knowledgeable and personal. Great experience.
03/18/2017
We were so glad we did this "off the beaten path" activity. It was definitely less polished than our other activities, and more athletically intensive that the pic on the website would suggest. It would have been nice if they offered something more substantial than fruit and water after some serious paddling and a considerable amount of time in the water, but we knew going in that that was what they offered and we brought some of our own snacks. The snorkeling was good, but not spectacular. We also knew that going in, so we didn't have high expectations but wanted the experience. Would be nice if some of the other activities Ballena Aventura offers were offered via PTW--it seems they have motorboat rides in the park with snorkeling--although not sure we would have chosen that.
12/26/2014
Excellent.