Turrialba Volcano — Local services in Santa Cruz

KNOW, before you go !!!

The crater of the Turrialba Volcano is spectacular, but the tour, as devised by SINAC (government) and the the private concessionary is among the most deficient that I have experienced, and I am an avid park visitor.

First of all, your walk starts off with a 1/4 mile ascent on a public asphalt road. Then you enter a private cattle farm and walk on their main access road, which is a wide path with gravel and loose rock. Finally, you are on the (also wide) SINAC access road. At no point on this experience do you walk on a mountain trail or within the beautiful cloud forest which is characteristic of this area. This is a huge miss.

Prior to initiating our walk to the crater, while we were at the base camp, the SINAC officials kept two ATVs running for 10-15 minutes. These were loud and stunk up the air with their exhaust. Then, they passed us twice as we were hiking up the road. Imagine driving 5-6 hours round trip so as to experience pristine mountain air and being subject to this.

I will add that the reservations process was not good. Despite having several days of anticipation and being flexible with our days, we were not given the desired time slot, which in the end actually resulted in us not being able to see the view from the top lookout. And finally, our guide was focused on engaging with the spanish-speaking participants, which made us feel uncomfortable.

As for cost info: If you are a family of 5, you will spend over $200 on the tour itself ($40+ pp). Park entry is about $5 per person. Locals pay about 40% less. Because of the remote location, transportation is not cheap, wether you rent a car or hire a transfer. A family could easily invest $500 for this experience.

This review should be a 1/5. I am scoring it a 3 because the volcano is amazing … and with the hope that the people behind this effort fix it up and do a bit of justice to the setting.

Also, the corresponding entities should know that this type of situation is part of what stimulates people to opt for illegal hikes. If the official experiences were better, fewer people would...

Feeling strange giving such low rating for a natural attraction.

Actually, volcan itself is good - wonderful views, the route is not very difficult.

My biggest concern is that besides the entrance to the national park, you must pay 41$ per person for a company which provides “guides”. In reality, all they do is just give you a helmet and say that there’s the only one route and you can climb with any speed, no need to wait for anybody. Meanwhile, the guide is going somewhere behind. Furthermore, when we were returning back (we were the last 2 persons), all the gates in the national park had been already closed - they not only don’t wait for you, they even don’t care that you are somewhere at the volcan. So you pay this money literally for NOTHING,...

This is an amazing hike but you must have a guide (no entry without one). We used Icetur and we needed 6 people and had to get to Albergue de Cortijo el Quetzal (to meet the guide) by ourselves with a taxi (and it needs to be a 4x4. As well as the guide cost you also need to pay the park entrance fee - you can do that at the park with a credit card only. The walk is short (4K) but challenging because of the elevation but the views are stunning. For return you could arrange for pick up by a taxi or walk back down to Santa Cruz and take a bus back. There is a nice soda in Santa Cruz where you can eat. Definitely worth the effort and worth a very...