Puerto Caldera-Holland America

[Golden Cocker Spaniel]

We are in Costa Rica on Nov. 9/09 from 8-5pm Anyone taken the excusions offered by the Veendam? that you can recommend?

[arlodog]

We booked an independant tour with Louis at Tucan Limo and went to Tourbouri Park for the day. After the park we went into a local town and visited fruit stands, stopped and had a local beer and went to the grocery store. It was a very enjoyable day. I don't know that I would recommend Tourbouri again, but definately would recomend Tucan Limo! There is not a lot close to this port. One of the people on our ship never made it to their destination and had to turn around due to road construction. Our driver was very careful to watch the time and got us back with an hour to spare. We watched as a couple of the ships tour buses pulled up at the last minute--everyone was talking about the delays due to the construction in the area.

I didn't hear many talk about their tours here. I did hear lots of comments that the tour to the town where they have the ox carts was not worth it.

Hope this helps!

[orangearmy]

we were supposed to stop at Puerto Caldera on the Westerdam on April 27th but the day before Captain Harris informed us that he had gotten a berth at Punteranus. They are about 7 miles apart. As we drove by Puerto Caldera on our excursion we were happy to have berthed in Punteranus. There seemed to be very little at Caldera. As far as HAL excursions go we can't help you there. We booked an independent tour with Okey Dokey tours and had a great day exploring Costa Rica. Okey dokey had us back to the ship a little over an hour early in spite of running into some delays due to road constuction.

[TCF]

We were in Punatranes (sp) last October on the Veendam and while we used a private tour provider through our travel agent I know that HAL offered the same excursion we took because we ran into the HAL bus at a couple of locations.

The tour was to the Tarcoles River...although it is really a mangrove swamp. Then we went to Esparza...a wonderful town not far from the pier. It was a great tour...that actually turned into a bit of an adventure for us.

If you want to read about it and see some pictures of the day go to travelpod.com and login to Tomtravel. Just go through the index until you find the right blog....the index is kind of long because we spent 5 weeks on the Veendam but you shouldn't have any trouble finding it.

BTW both the Costa Rica ports on the Pacific side are nasty....but once you get inland it is gorgeous country.