Combo Tour Marino Ballena National Park

We had such a lovely time! While we didn’t see any whales (as it was towards the end of the season), we saw a lot of dolphins. Great boat ride as well. Loved every minute of it. We had Stephanie as our guide and she was amazing and very knowledgable. Thank you!

At arrival, the staff are very friendly, genuine, and professional. Our tour guide Edwin was very knowledgeable about the whales, Marino ballena National park, and other sea creatures! Experience: we started at the office (there is parking for rental cars) and walked to the beach (5-10 mins). We stopped on the way to see baby caimans and iguanas. Then, Edwin and the crew helped us into the boat (speed boat which means sea sickness is not as bad). Then we snorkeled for 30 mins and saw schools of fish. After snorkeling, we went to look for whales and on the way, we saw a sea turtle! Finally we saw 3 whales (male, female, and baby)! Overall I would recommend this tour for anyone staying in Quepos. The drive is 45 minutes (straightforward path) but it’s SO worth it as Uvita is a cute town with gorgeous beaches. I felt safe and overall this was a highlight of my time in Costa Rica.

We booked this tour via our hotel. We were very excited about this trip since we really wanted to see some whales and I read you can’t really see them from the shore-so a boat tour was a good option. Unfortunately, we spent the first hour along the shore-our guide showed us all the beaches and caves in detail-instead of looking out into the open water. We were told 3 times that there were over 200 caves in this area. The climax was us stopping in a bay after half an hour- and them asking us if we wanted to go to the beach. There was a brief discussion since half of us wanted to actually see some animals first while the families with children wanted to spend time at the beach. Thank god we did not stop-since this was a dolphin/whale watching tour and I did not spend 75$ to go to a beach. Finally our guide finished her little beach/cave tour and told us we would be going into the deep water to spot some animals. We joined other boats who had found some dolphins-we didn’t get the best view though because the other boats were in the way. A highlight was the interesting facts about dolphins from our guide: “they are good swimmers”. I learned a lot that day. We then went snorkelling where there were no fish and were handed some fruit afterwards-we didn’t even have time to eat them because that was the end of the tour. I know that there is no guarantee to seeing wild animals. But looking in the deep waters where they actually are would be a good start.