Cabo Blanco Travelers

We participated on the snorkeling and the bioluminescence tours the same day. Here are our thoughts: The Isla Tortuga tour is called snorkeling tour, although it is a beach day tour in a protected beach with option to snorkel roughly 2x30 minutes. The naming is correct because technically you can snorkel there. But to set expectations: technically being able to snorkel does not mean that snorkeling in this area is enjoyable. They, just like other tour operators, fulfill the tourists’ demand. In reality it’s a 4 hour beach tour in a nice area with short and optional snorkeling options. It’s not a fringing reef experience, which I believe is the only meaningful snorkeling experience for hobby snorkelers. Nevertheless, you can swim with schools of fish, but the water is not crystal clear, you can see roughly up to 2-3 meters under water, there’s no chance to see what’s happening on the ocean bed, where things really happen. Summary: if you want to drink a Coco Loco cocktail in a nice beach and share your pineapple with a peccary piggy (strictly forbidden), you want to swim finally in the water because it’s generally not possible in Santa Teresa; and maybe you want to torture yourself with snorkeling outside a coral reef, this is your trip. Otherwise choose the other tour that we took: The bioluminescence tour is a must have, if you don’t do it and have never done it before, you’ll regret it until you have the next opportunity or until the end of your life, if that opportunity never comes. I don’t want to describe what this tour is about, feel free to search for bioluminescence videos on the worldwide internet, you’ll exactly get the fascinating experience you see in those videos. So, why I don’t deduct stars because of the snorkeling tour: The company does not promise anything that they don’t fulfill. You’ll be in water with snorkel equipment, the crew never rushes anyone to stop snorkeling, they are chilled and helpful. They must compete with many others with the same profile, all of them call this as snorkeling tour instead of beach tour. There is some room for improvement for unexperienced swimmers, I hope Cabo Blanco read this review and get the proper equipments for that, it would be a very small investment. They also ran out of the bigger size fins, they would have needed only one more for the last who left the boat, that was me. I didn’t mind, this snorkeling is not interesting for me. I, like many others, just set the wrong expectations. It’s simply stupid to snorkel in such an area. The tour operators know it very well, but the tourists still want it. The company also collaborates with a local restaurant in Montezuma where the participants can get 5% discount. It’s a shame we didn’t have time to try their food, it looked really promising. One more thing to mention: They organize transfers from Santa Teresa for both tours for reasonable price, that’s a big plus. If you take both tours the same day, you have to pay the transfer only once.

Loved the tour! The guides were very attentive and helpful! Had some cool stops on the way to the island. While snorkeling we were surrounded by colorful fish. Overall an amazing experience. The lunch was also tasty and the time at the island was the perfect break. Would recommend! It’s also great to support the locally owned and operated company:)

We paid for the bioluminescence tour. What we received was no explanations for what we would experience (not a word on the bioluminescence itself or anything else for that matter); a ride in a boat that may or may not have met any safety standards; a visit to a beach where ‘snacks’ were left on a table and where any drinks were merely hypothetical unless you wanted to go to a restaurant and pay for a cold drink; a 20-minute dunk-and-drift which included people being told to jump into water well over their heads with zero lighting and zero assistance from a crew who can best be described as completely lackadaisical; and then a drive back to Montezuma with 16 people crammed into a 15-passenger van for a 40-minute ride. Everything about this experience, other than the bioluminescence itself (which Nature provides without any assist from this company) made it the worst tourism offering I’ve experienced in five trips to Costa Rica. Bottom-line: - If you’d like to feel like you’ve been simultaneously abandoned, hustled and ripped-off, this is the tour for you.