Costa Rica with Wildlife Experts

Wild Planet Adventure’s Costa Rica eco tours are every wildlife lover’s dream trip. Choose from a variety of our Costa Rica trips and all-inclusive vacation packages, including our award-winning Costa Rica Ultimate Wildlife Eco-Tour, which is the most comprehensive wildlife-focused itinerary available in Costa Rica.

We are National Geographic Adventure award-winning wildlife experts, with 30 years of direct, on-the-ground travel experience in Costa Rica as a wildlife-specialty tour operator. We operate our own trips, with our own local staff, packed with Wild Planet Adventures’ legendary wildlife expertise. Our Director, wildlife expert Josh Cohen, guided in Costa Rica for over 10 years himself, and our 30 years of in-depth logistical and wildlife expertise comes from the humble roots of his personal, first-hand experience. No other company will expose you to so much wildlife!

In addition to our award-winning wildlife expertise, our all-inclusive Costa Rica wildlife adventures include everything you’d expect from a trip named one of the Top 10 Must-Do Trips in the World by FODORS. They include:

• All accommodations, specializing in top rated rainforest eco-lodges, small boutique hotels, tropical beach cabanas and cloud-forest mountain hideaways, selected both for their breathtaking accommodations as well as best access to prime wildlife viewing habitat.
• All meals - including meals eaten at restaurants
• All ground transportation
• All activities, including hiking, wildlife viewing and birdwatching in up to 10 national parks and biological reserves, plus cloud-forest canopy tours, whitewater rafting (mild, to emphasize wildlife viewing) flat-water wildlife river float trips, hot springs, volcanoes, beaches on both coasts, sea-kayaking with dolphins, snorkeling at night in the bioluminescence, a sloth rescue center and more.
• All National Park admissions
• All high-end naturalist or biologist guides (all but one of our guides are biologists and most have been working with Wild Planet Adventures for 10 years or more.)
• Small Groups - Average 6-10 travelers, never more than 12!

Our Costa Rica EcoTours Include More Value
We recommend that you compare our award-winning Costa Rica Ultimate Wildlife EcoTour to any other Costa Rica itinerary. We include significantly more value –more destinations, more activities and more park admissions– than any of our competitors. Our specially designed activities enable you to see more wildlife, for longer periods, at closer range. Our expert local biologist and naturalist guides accompany you throughout the entire tour to spot wildlife, lead our world-class excursions and provide highly skilled wildlife knowledge about local migrations, seasonal courtship, nesting, peak activity times, and travel secrets for safe, up-close encounters of wildlife in their natural habitat, all with an authentic Costa Rican flair.

Our Adventures Include a Diversity of Eco-Systems for the Best Chance to Spot Wildlife in their Natural Habitat
Costa Rica boasts over 6% of the world’s biodiversity, and our ability to expose you to as many eco-systems as possible, in a comfortable, relaxed pace, is one of the many secrets to our 30 years of success as wildlife experts. Traveling to a wider diversity of different ecosystems maximizes wildlife sightings - both number of animals as well as the number of species. It also affords the best chance to spot rare and endangered wildlife, in their natural habitat. Our 9-day Costa Rica Ultimate Wildlife Eco-tour visits approximately 6 national parks & wildlife reserves, and our 14-day itinerary includes 10 national parks, all with less travel than required by most trips half their length! It’s no wonder that over 85% of our Costa Rica travelers choose our full 14-day Ultimate Wildlife tour.

The Pace of our Costa Rica EcoTours is Spacious, Not Rushed. Wildlife Viewing Takes Time
Including more eco-systems and more wildlife doesn’t have to mean traveling at a rushed pace – far from it! Travel in Costa Rica requires an expert understanding of its unique geography – and its circular continental divide – or travelers risk crisscrossing the continental divide, backtracking or retracing your steps. The best Costa Rica itineraries like Wild Planet Adventures’, logistically sync together the maximum number of ecosystems in a route that circles around the continental divide, while avoiding these common pitfalls. Our years of extensive logistical expertise allows us to include the widest diversity of eco-systems possible, while keeping travel times to a minimum. As wildlife experts, our pace needs to be slow because the slower we go, the more wildlife we see. We also spend at least 3 days/2 nights in most destinations to make sure the ratio of time spent enjoying is significantly more than the time spent traveling.

We Combine Destinations that are Off-Tourist-Radar with Iconic Destinations
Our blend of remote destinations, special wildlife activities, and top naturalist and biologist guides provides the best possible chance to see rare animals in the wild. We visit some of Costa Rica’s most wildlife-rich destinations. Our focus on off-the-beaten-path destinations like Cahuita, La Selva, Carara, Puerto Jiminez, and the more remote Carate side of Corcovado National Park give you that remote, untouched and special feeling for the widest variety of both wildlife and different types of adventure activities. We still include excursions in some of the more popular destinations such as Arenal Volcano, Monteverede Cloud-forest, and Manuel Antonio’s famous beaches, but even in these destinations we strive to avoid the crowds and provide an experience that wouldn’t otherwise be possible on your own.

Our Costa Rica Wildlife Eco-Tours are All-Inclusive
You’ll discover miles of unspoiled beaches, hike rainforests, enjoy cloud-forest canopy tours (including cloud-forest canopy bridges or optional zip lines), enjoy world-class whitewater rafting, wildlife river float-trips, fiery volcanoes and hot springs, sea-kayaking with dolphins, snorkeling at night in the bioluminescence, and heart-stopping encounters with exotic wildlife and colorful tropical birds at every turn. All of these activities are including in our award-winning Costa Rica Ultimate Wildlife Eco-Tour! There is NO fine print indicating "free days" that require you to pay more money for activities that should have been included in your trip – our Costa Rica eco-tours are all inclusive. We also operate our own trip and do not have lodges run our Costa Rica tours. That’s because lodge-run activities are much more commercial and typically visit the same places every day, often with large groups, which seriously limits the possibility of all but the most habituated wildlife sightings. Lodges also do not have high-quality biologist guides on staff with Wild Planet’s depth of wildlife expertise.

Costa Rica Eco-Tours for Wildlife Lovers
Costa Rica’s twelve distinct ecological zones of breathtaking beauty cover an area the size of New Hampshire, from the mangrove forests of the Caribbean lowlands to the misty cloud-forests that blanket the top of the continental divide and back down to the sunny Pacific beaches. Nowhere else on earth is biological abundance and diversity so evident than in the Costa Rican rainforests: tropical rainforests contain more than half of all living things known to man. The rainforest is a place of peace and renewal; mysterious, life-affirming, and of majestic proportions. Costa Rica alone has more plant species than the whole of Europe, and a staggering world of exotic wildlife that runs into the millions of species.

We offer A Wide Variety of Costa Rica Wildlife Adventures Suitable For All Ages and Skill Levels
Wild Planet Adventures offers a variety of Costa Rica wildlife tours to meet individual budgets and interests. Our Ultimate Wildlife itinerary is our most comprehensive, but we also offer custom trips for individuals, families, groups, organizations, travel agents, and special interest trips like wildlife photography. As you browse our Costa Rica tours, if you don't see what you're looking for, please give us a call!