Tropical Tours Shuttles in Costa Rica

Tried rides with Tropical Tours Shuttle as well as EcoTrans, and I would choose EcoTrans. At the start I asked them questions on WhatsApp, where only some were answered. When it came to the morning to get picked up, we were ready before the pick up time and waiting to be picked up. After waiting 20min, I asked them what order were we in getting picked up to confirm they were still on their way. They never ended up responding to this day (but we did get picked up). The drive itself was less than ideal. We were travelling from Nosara to Tamarindo. Driving would take under 2 hours. But this is a shuttle so of course we didn't assume that. Would 2.5 hours be reasonable? 3 hours? It ended up taking us over 4 hours. We wish this was more clear from them. The trip ended up going from Nosara headed south to Samara then back up. By the 2 hour mark we were close to where we started. With Ecotrans, we took small detours as well to pick people up (to be expected with shuttles) but we wish such a detour was clearer. Most of the passengers were very surprised as well. The driver didn't speak English, so we relied on a bilingual passenger to translate. The drive felt like the driver was rushing due to how long the trip was, ignoring speed bumps. Very drastic contrast to Ecotrans whose drivers explicitly slow down on every speed bump (almost to a full stop, felt a bit excessive tbh). Finally, feels like they really tried to maximize each ride by jamming as many people in as possible. When the shuttle was mostly full, all the passengers were always surprised when they tried to jam more people into the shuttle. There ended up not being enough space for luggages, so they started strapping them to the roof! Compared to Ecotrans shared shuttle, where the routes seemed more direct and their number one priority didn't feel like maximizing the number of people per shuttle. All in all, would book Econtrans next time. Their rates were generally more favourable, but wanted to compare the two and booked where Tropic Shuttle was cheaper. Next time, I would probably pay the extra for the few trips where Ecotrans costs slightly more. Just compare their ratings.

We had two long shuttles with Tropical Tours and the drivers were prompt, courteous and drove reasonably. I especially liked that they wore company branded gear which made them easy to find when you needed to connect with them. Shoutout to Byron, Leo and Angel. Thanks much for getting us around. Only other tip would be to fly if you can. The charm of the windy country roads wears off quickly. (sorry folks)

We waited 1 hour longer than the pick up time we agreed on. They apparently forgot about us as we were not on their list. We went from Tamarindo to Samara. They did not tell us that we had to switch buses inbetween, drivers were only speaking spanish so it was very confusing for some passengers. In the second bus there were more people than seats and they almost did not want to transport us because the lists from the office did not have our names on it even though we paid in advance weeks ago.