Puntarenas/Island Princess/Panama Canal

[maxine22]

:) Looking for tours while in Costa Rica. The ship offers "Costa Rica's Favorites". This includes the pacific aerial tram, a 2 hour river cruise, and lunch. Seems quite pricey. Have any of ya'll done this tour? Any recommendations for other ship tours? Thanks for your help.

[Snowbird]

We did this tour on the Oct 9 Island Princess Panama Canal sailing. Although we did enjoy the tour, I can't say I'd recommend it. The bus ride to the Tarcoles River took about an hour. The boat ride was enjoyable but because of all the recent rain, the boat had to skip the mangrove forest part of the tour on the Tarcoles River. According to the guide, that's where we would have seen monkeys and sloths; we did see lots of crocodiles. Then it was about another half-hour bus ride to the aerial tram eco-park where we had a nice lunch but the tram ride itself wasn't that great. Before we boarded the tram we watched a video about the eco-park (could have done without that). I had the wrong impression of the tram; I thought we'd ride the tram to the top, get out, maybe walk around, and then reboard to go back down. Nope; you stay in the tram for the round trip ride to the top and then back down. It was interesting but took a long time for what we saw. Then back at the bottom, we took a guided walking tour of the park's gardens. This took another hour or so; I could have done it in half the time had it been a self-guided tour, and still seen everything. Then another approximately 1.5 hour bus ride back to the ship. My biggest complaint with this tour was the length. It took at least an hour longer than Princess' information indicated. By the time we got back to the ship, there was absolutely no time for any shopping. I'm not usually much of a shopper, but Costa Rica was where I was really looking forward to it.

[maxine22]

Thanks for the info on Fav. of Costa Rica. I think we will keep looking. Thanks again.