Travel Review: Costa Rica Vacation, Arenal, Tortuguero, Manuel Antonio National Park, Tarcoles River Wildlife Cruise, Rafting

My wife and I just returned from a 10-day trip to Costa Rica in early January.  This was our first visit to Costa Rica, and we arranged the itinerary with the help of this travel company.  The service provided by this company was terrific from start to finish – both during the planning process and the trip itself.   We are pretty experienced international travelers but had very limited time to research or plan this trip, so we needed a good travel agency to make it happen.  We sent an inquiry to the Zicasso website in late October and were contacted by representatives from several agencies, but we quickly decided to work with this agent because of his responsiveness and attention to detail.   Based on several phone conversations with us about our interests and travel preferences, our agent quickly put together a proposed itinerary for us, and then revised it based on our feedback.  I was impressed with how carefully our agent listened to us in putting together the itinerary.  We stayed in four different parts of the country for 2-3 days each (Tortuguero, Arenal, Sarapiquí and Manuel Antonio), which gave us a sense of the rich variety of Costa Rica while not jamming too many destinations into a 10-day trip.  The itinerary included some pre-planned tours and activities in each location but our agent did not push anything on us -- we only booked the things we knew in advance we wanted to do and at our request, he included a couple of free days in the itinerary  The lodges and hotels that our agent selected for us were all excellent.  Our agent met us in person on the night we arrived to walk us through the arrangements, and he also arranged for drivers to get us from each destination to the next during the trip (we decided up front not to rent a car).  Having the transport pre-arranged was a major stress reducer for us, and all the drivers were punctual, capable, and friendly.   In short, we had a fabulous time.  I’m sure that with more time to plan up front, we could have done much of the booking ourselves and saved some money, but from our perspective the premium we paid for our agent's professional travel help was totally worth it.  We are thinking about going back to Costa Rica to see some other parts of the country next year, and will happily use this company again when we put the next trip plan together.