Exploradores Outdoors - Exploration Center — Local services in Siquirres

I did the 2 day raft trip and everything about it was amazing!!! Highly recommend top notch outfit.

They offer transportation to and from with an option of different pickup and drop off locations which I recommend. Less hassle and overall cost than rental car.

Upon arrival to the outfit they have buffet style breakfast ready and time to relax and stretch legs before heading off to raft. After breakfast groups are selected and head off together to the first half of the trip. The transportation from breakfast to the river has just your team including rafters and guides. It's a great start to get to know one another.

Our raft guide was Grabe. He was absolutely amazing and a fabulous guide. He grew up in the jungle of the area we rafted and was extremely knowledgeable. He picked great locations at several spots along the river to hike and swim in waterfalls. As we hiked he shared stories and a vast knowledge of the vegetation, insects and wildlife. We even picked leaves from a tree to eat that tasted like crisp dark greens with lemon and green apple. Grabe also showed us how to fish like the locals with a stick, wire and peice of pinneapple.

The safety of the entire group was top notch. The guides were experienced and made sure everyone's hard hats and vest were fitted properly. They have very thorough safety training before even gettkng into a raft with a practice run at the start of the river to ensure everyone understood and remembered. They also stressed safety throughout the trip and ensuerd even during the hikes everyone kept their gear on to protect agaisnt any falls in slippery areas. Besides our raft guide there was one safety kayak per raft who was also well trained and very skilled.

At the end of 1st day rafting, we arrived at the River Lodge. The outfitters took care of everything. They transported all your belongings and had waiting for you at the lodge so you didn't have to worry about dry bags or lugging anything. While we relaxed and changed clothes. Our guides readied our rooms, making beds with fresh clean linens. They were also the chef's for every meal. The cooking channel is truly missing out if they don't feature an episode on top river chefs. We were basically camping in little huts in the middle of the jungle with no electricity. I wasn't expecting much for the meals, WOW was i surprised! Every meal was fantastic with fresh locally organic grown food and prepared gourmet style. The flamming Bannanas Foster was truly off the charts! In all we had 2 breakfast, 2 lunches and 1 dinner. There was so much delicious food, something for everyone even the pickiest with diet restrictions. Pretty sure we all gained a few pounds and had to loosen our life jackets for the second trip. I have to mention the cleanliness of the staff as well, everything was cleaned and disinfected and hands washed before and after cooking.

As an fyi, there was no wifi and the solared power electricity went out so cold showers. But really your in the middle of the jungle and rafting a river. The fact that there was solar panels for power was impressive.

All in all, well organized and not a...

What an amazing trip, still can't stop raving about it, and so glad we went.

Will go into some of the details here, since I had a lot of questions before the trip and maybe this will help some other people in the future have some peace of mind!

Leading up to the trip, there were a couple weird things that worried me. You put in your info to pay and you get a confirmation, but then you get a second email asking you to pay them for real this time. That seemed odd, but it ended up being okay. I thought there would be some kind of followup email or text in the days before the trip confirming pick up time, but it turned out there wasn't any, that was in the original email.

The morning of the trip, I was worried, bc they didn't show up when they said they would. We ended up waiting 30 minutes, and the longer we waited the more worried I was about if they were coming or not. If they had just sent a confirmation email the day before, it wouldn't have been so worrisome.

But once they came, the rest of the day was super smooth. There was a nice, comfortable van that took us to the Exploration Center. The driver was super nice, and the drive was really nice.

Once we got there, we had the option of putting our stuff away, putting on sunscreen, and getting breakfast. The eggs they had for breakfast were delicious. Tons of bathrooms and sinks, all very clean. They also had changing room, and there was lots of time to get ready, we didn't feel rushed.

Then we back in the vans to go to the river. There, Andres gave us a whole talk on safety, commands, and what to do in different scenarios. And Andres was incredible. He was a rafting expert and standup comedian in one. His delivery was so spot on.

We got lucky with the rafting at the end of April bc it had just rained the day before, so we never had to go out of the raft and walk it.

And the rafting part was so fun. Rapid after rapid, it was just the right amount of time. Andres was also our raft guide and he was so adept at getting us through and even playing little pranks on us getting us wet or making us spin. It was so awesome.

3 tips Bring sunscreen and reapply on the boat Bring a lot of water. We just brought a standard plastic water bottle and ran out midway and were so thirsty. Bring a GoPro. If you don't have the helmet attachments you can still strap it to your life jacket and get some good shots.

1 tip for the rafting guid Before splitting people up into groups, they should ask around about injuries. We had 2 people in our group who were both injured and requested sitting on the right side of the boat, and we spent the first 20 minutes not getting very far because the left side was paddling way harder than the right side and we kept needing to back paddle. They should try to even out the groups and make sure 1 raft doesn't have multiple injured people who need to sit on the same side.

After the rapids, we were able to shower and eat. Again it never felt rushed, and I was impressed by how clean the facilities were. Lunch was also delicious. Shoutout to the...

The actual rafting tour was great, knowledgeable guide, friendly, and great team on the raft. However, the driver taking us to the adventure center was driving like a maniac, having lived in Costa Rica for 10 years I am well aware of the roads and the behaviour of the drivers. However this was on an entire next level, the driver was clearly not paying attention, he was very distracted by the guide and his cell phone. He continually was swerving into the oncoming lane of traffic, other motorist were honking because of this. During the erratic driving, there was a tire blown, and changed road side. This concerned me even more as I gathered the driving would become more intense and fast to make up time. I was unfortunately right, the driving got to be so erratic and intense I strongly asked in Spanish for the driver to slow down, to which he did, but my comment opened up a whole can of worms, and acted as a ripple effect for the reminder of our trip. After making this comment, I noticed the guides during lunch staring and pointing in our direction, we were treated very unfairly after that, cold, rude and it was so obvious what was going on. During the demonstration on the bus(about safety) my friend was nearly hit in the face twice with items the guide was showing us, to which I made another comment about "safety first". Things just escalated from there. As I mentioned the rafting was fun, but there were probing questions from our rafting guide about what happened in the van/flat tire and comments made, it was clear this has been something everyone was made aware of and we were definitely ostracized for. At the end of the tour upon leaving the bus, I said "thank you and good bye" and was literally met with silence. 👌🏼. Tour buses are constantly running off the road due to unsafe driving, this is a huge deterrent for me in ever using this tour company or referring this tour company to friends and family who come visit. In the 100+ reviews I've written, I've never felt the need to write such a detailed review, nor do I regret speaking out against unsafe driving. People come to Costa Rica to enjoy themselves, not to be fearful for their life before they even arrive to their...