LavaLand Tours CR — Attraction in La Fortuna

The owner of this place, was very unprofessional and disrespectful. If I could I’d give zero stars I would! the only great thing of this place was the workers Jenny and David. They truly took care of us the best way they could. It was not in their control that their boss has no compassion or heart. The boss Juilo only cared about money. He is a total scam, we missed one of the tours because of the weather and he kept trying to pressure us to keep doing the night tour when lightning, thunder and rain happened all night. He explained to us if there was bad weather he would return our money. With our case that did not happen at all. He was not professional at all to return our money. He kept making excuses and said he could take us to another tours to make it up and we obviously decided not to do that route because of already the unprofessional actions already. Please if you come to Costa Rica i highly encourage you do not come to this tour at all. I feel bad for the workers that has to put up with someone like him. He will do whatever it takes to get your money. He is very short tempered and had a big ego, that he is the boss and that he runs his tour the way he wants without the tourist considerations. When driving with him, to drop us off to another part of Costa Rica it was horrible. He had to drop us off because I guess the company he collaborates with cancelled on him due to the amount of less of 9 people. If we knew the way he was we would have not rode with him. He did not care about our safety, and almost crashed a few times. He was driving very carelessly. His ego really took over the van that we were driving in. If we knew he was going to be driving us we would have never gone with him. He talks very bad about tourists and is racist. Driving down to our location he made several stops and never informed us on what was going on. He picked up another tourist and literally was touching her and doing what he can do inappropriately in front of us. We decided after 5 hours driving with him, it was best to find another ride to get to our destination. It was literally best to keep the loss of the money. Which was very sad. We literally had him drop us off somewhere random because we felt the bad intentions with him. We ended up taking the bus to our destination. Literally felt our lives were at risk. Side note he took our fruits we bought, assuring that it would be safe in the van during the first part of the tour. And when it came to the second part of the tour he didn’t pick us up. David came to our rescue. Jenny and David need to leave the owner Juilo because they deserve way better. Thank you to Jenny and David. Juilo does not deserve...

My friend and I booked a full day tour (La Fortuna Waterfall, Arenal Volcano Hike, Mystic Hanging Bridges and Hot Spring) with this company. We booked the day before at the office, negotiating with the boss. We compared prices with other companies, which led from the original price of 155 Dollars (20 Dollars more than all the other companies asked for as a fix price) to a price of 130 Dollars per person.

As we didn't want a big group tour, we asked for the size of the group and he said that already 8 people booked the tour for the next day, but not more would join. We also agreed that the guide would pick us up at 7:20 am, so that we could have breakfast at the hotel.

Which seemed promising first was a lot of crushed expectations in the end. First nobody showed up at the pickup time. When I texted the boss, he answered that they're on the way and he showed up in his private car and a young guide. For the waterfall we were alone with the guide, three others joined us for the volcano hike.

The guide Byron was really accommodating and worked hard to give us a good experience. So he's the reason, why we give two stars instead of zero!!!

The boss on the other hand, was the one driving us around. That's why we ended up waiting at every stop of the tour for him for an uncertain amount of time as the boss left every time in between to do other business. Sometimes he drove other people around as a side business with us as well. He always was behaving as a know it all and had lame excuses for everything or just didn't react to the fact, that he was later than announced.

The worst point of the trip was, that he didn't bring us to a hot spring with changing rooms/showers or any kind of infrastructure. He just drove us to the Hot River, which is free to use for everyone. That's definitely not what you expect, when you book a trip to hot springs with a company, we could have done that ourselves for free............

We really cannot recommend this company as the boss is selling false expectations and I'm pretty sure, that the use of his private car can't be legal as well. When we talked to our hotel staff the next day about it, they also confirmed that this guy is known in town for not being a good person. Reading other reviews here, concerning the boss suggests...

TLDR: Attention, very unserious/scam, Boss Julio insults you in the worst way

We booked a shared shuttle from La Fortuna to Uvita on the Pacific coast three days ago. For this, Danny from LavaLand Tours charged $75 per head. At first there were already discrepancies, because Danny permanently confused the Uvita at the Pacific with the Caribbean Uvita and therefore gave wrong travel times. Although he seemed untrustworthy, we finally booked anyway, since LavaLand Tours was the only provider offering a direct shuttle (another Red Flag). The next day Danny wrote that it would not work, but they would drive us to Manuel Antonio National Park, from there we should take a public bus. For the much shorter distance, however, he still wanted the full $75 per head. Since we could get this ride with another provider for $50 per head I immediately wrote that I ask for cancellation and refund at LavaLand Tours. Then the real drama began. Danny said he would first have to ask his boss if a refund was possible (despite not performing the service), plus he would have to get the money from his boss first (at a tour company that works permanently with cash). He finally also gave me the number of Julio, his boss. I called Julio, who told me unfriendly that he has no time right now, because he has to clean his house. He told me to call back later. Hours later I called Danny again, who told me I could not pick up the money until 9pm. Since this was our last evening in La Fortuna and we had a dinner date, I asked if it would not be possible earlier. Danny replied very unkindly that he was only following instructions from his boss Julio. When I finally contacted Julio again, he immediately started yelling. He insulted me in the worst way with very vulgar words, which I don't want to repeat here. Then he hung up. Finally we went to get our money in the evening, Danny didn't say a word to us. Please be careful and book your ride somewhere else if you don't want to be ripped off...