The Congo Trail Costa Rica — Attraction in Sardinal

What I expected to be an ATV ride, turned out to be my worst nightmare on Friday 12/13/24. Originally, the ride was enjoyable but please be prepared that there is not enough protective equipment for this kind of ATV ride. I’ve been on several and this by far is the most adventurous. Typically, I would say that’s a good thing. However, this company is not properly prepared for emergencies. I went on this excursion with two of my friends. While mid way through the trail, after our stop at a waterfall, our instructor changed our ATV’s to 4x4 mode. We set out for the rest of the ride and she was stuck at the bottom of a hill. My best friend signaled for help and I got the instructors attention. He went down to help her and here is where this trip turns tragic. He instructed her to gas backwards because her wheel was stuck. The ATV flipped backwards landing on top of her. The ignition landed on her face. I got to the bottom of the hill and she was bleeding non stop out of her mouth, nose and her eyes. The instrument or called for help on his Walky Talky and help took a pretty long time to get to us in the middle of the jungle. They did not arrive to the scene immediately. We had to put pressure on parts of her face with shirts to catch and stop the blood. When we got back to the visitor area of the site, there happened to be a medical doctor present from the US. They did not have supplies to take her vitals. They had a stethoscope and the pressure monitor was children’s size! There was not even anything to properly sterilize everyone’s hands while touching her. We had to scrape around for hand sanitizer. All of this time, she is still losing blood. It took almost 2 hours before an ambulance got to us. I kept asking for help and the workers pretty much just kept staring at me and not responding. Keep in mind, the majority of them were in fact bilingual. The doctor continued to press that she needed to get to a hospital immediately and they advised they could not take her in their own cars and we had to wait, as it was out of their control. While we waited they helped with nothing. No water, no sterilization, no sympathy. We were becoming afraid that she might bleed out, this is just how much blood she was losing. She was slowly losing consciousness and there was nothing we could do about it. The ambulance arrived almost two hours later because there are not many in the area apparently. There was one person who was nicer than the others and he followed behind the ambulance once we left to go to the hospital.

If you plan to go on this excursion, I recommend that you prepare yourself with your own first aid in case of emergency, and even your own helmet if you can get one. It’s less protective than a bike helmet. It’s a beautiful scene, and the idea of riding through the jungle is amazing. But, it can turn tragic pretty quickly. This company is not prepared for urgencies, and they certainly are not prepared for fatalities. The waiver you sign frees them from being liable, there’s not getting around that. I would just assume that a company with this type of adventure would also be prepared to intervene immediately if there is an emergency. This company...

I visited The Congo Trail Costa Rica with my wife and 22 month old daughter along with another family with a child close in age to ours. The reservation was made by the other family, but my understanding was that they spoke to them via WhatsApp and the staff were very courteous and helpful. We drove in rental cars from the Westin which was fairly straightforward using Google Maps on our IPhones for navigation. In our case, I missed the turn into the park and was directed to turn onto a very gnarly dirt/rock trail with a questionable bridge crossing which was not for an inexperienced driver or a 2WD Hyundai. Nonetheless, once we arrived and checked in the staff were exceptional. I am a mechanical engineer and worked 14 years at a certain Musk rocket company developing propulsion systems - I understand safety and good design practices and let me say that this zip line setup impressed me, which is pretty hard to do. The professionalism of the staff in getting our group geared up was outstanding. The equipment is well thought out and the execution is very good. The zip lines have a primary and backup line. The harness has two clips as well, so I was at ease to know that even in the unlikely event of a cable failure there was a redundancy in place, and at all times you are tethered to something. This is how any life critical system should be designed, and here it was. A+. The animal sanctuary was good, not great. Our guide was great and very knowledgeable, I was just sad to see discarded pets caged for display in conditions that were better than dying in the wild but not as well maintained as I would have liked to see (for example a crocodile covered in algae who barely moves and eats 7-8 chickens once a week). All in all, I would still highly recommend this park. They also offer horseback riding, ATV tours, etc… depending on the ages of your group, you have lots of options if you come here. I would visit again if I had another chance to decide whether...

This was just an OK experience overall. We've been to many ziplining and adventure areas around the world and The Congo Trail is below average at best. We were staying at the RIU so this one was the better of the 2 in the area and only 20 minutes from our hotel. The best ziplining would be in the rain forest area closer to the volcano, but we weren't down for the 2 hour drive each way.

We opted for the longer tour which included ziplining, horseback riding and ATV driving. From the time we got there it was very unorganized, no one was really directing anyone where to go, there were no guides around, we all just had to figure it out on our own.

Even after the guides arrived they just sat off to the side and again we had to figure out what was happening. Some people were doing only one or two of the activities, and some were doing all, it was just very disorganized. We're used to having someone there to greet, direct, explain and make us feel welcomed and like we're having fun.

Because we were doing the horseback riding, we only got to do 3 ziplines, which was unfortunate because the ones we did were a little lame. This was not explained to us, we understood that we would be doing 10. After 3 ziplines we rode horses for what seemed like forever. It was a long and boring walk, about 60 minutes, compared to 20 minutes ziplining. Guides didn't say much of anything the entire time.

After the horseback riding we went back to the main area where no one really told us what was happening, we assumed we'd be offered the ATVing but no one did, and by that time we were over it so we left.

If you're a beginner you may enjoy this place. If you're experienced at any of the activities you'll likely find it very underwhelming.

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