Birding Costa Rica with Local Experts — See More Birds, Miss Nothing

Costa Rica Focus made our first Costa Rica experience perfect.

What a vacation this turned out to be. I’ve had the best vacation of my life, and a big part of this is down to Costa Rica Focus. Thanks a lot, and I want to recommend this company to everyone with a wish to visit Costa Rica. A thoroughly professional company, which gave my first-time birding experience with the American continent another dimension.

The drivers brought us safely between the sites. The local birding guides did an excellent job, and I were satisfied to discover the guides were equally nerdy as me. The guides knew bird-ID, song/calls and sites very well. I ended up with a species list of nearly 300, but would certainly have struggled reaching 220-230 without the help by the local birders from Costa Rica Focus. They also included my not-so-nerdy wife in a brilliant way, which made her happy as well.

Another home run by Costa Rica Focus

A 10-day birding trip with a photography focus. Great birding and photography with our fabulous guide Sr. Minor H. despite occasionally iffy weather. Locations were great, accomodations ranged from luxurious to very basic, food from merely very good to excellent, including some pleasant surprises like Pizzeria Los Colibries, on the road to Savegre where we ended up when our destination restaurant turned out to be closed due to a medical emergency in the owner’s family – really good pizza with near-perfect crust and hyper-local ingredients like local mushrooms, herbs from their own gardens, lettuce from their hydroponic gardens, etc. It’s the first pizza place on the right on the road down to San Gerardo de Dota from National Route 2. You can’t miss it:). Logistics were perfect, including arrival and departure.

Not a lot ot add to the overwhelmingly positive reviews of Costa Rica Focus. This is the fifth trip I’ve taken with them in four years, including one to Ecuador in collaboration with Ecuador Birds Tours, and if I go again to a destination they offer, I can’t think why I would look elsewhere.

Dream Trip to Costa Rica

The Itinerary was tailor-made with a private guide by Costa Rica Focus. I have been on a group excursion with this company in the past and wanted to streamline a trip. Jess, Wanda and Joan provided the exact trip that I requested with even more extra stops suggested by my guide along the way.

My guide, Alex C. is accomplished, knowledgeable and an affable companion, constantly displaying his expertise and enthusiasm. Costa Rica Focus treats every client like family. I was asked about my comfort and experience throughout the trip. I am an older female adult, travelling alone. I felt totally safe at every location.

The accommodations were comfortable, clean and in all cases surrounded by a habitat of exquisite beauty and an abundance of birds and other wildlife. I could not have asked for anything more.

Fabulous Adventure Awaits in Guanacaste!

“Wings of Northern Costa Rica” was my fourth birding trip with Costa Rica Focus (Costa Rica/3 trips; Ecuador/1 trip), made extra special by the fact that I was able to reunite with birding companions I had met on previous trips! Although we all live far from one another, we have stayed in touch and try to plan our birding adventures together with the help of Joan at Costa Rica Focus. Joan bends over backwards to meet our needs at every turn. Talk about personalized service! I know that I will always be in the best of hands. As an experienced birder living in Costa Rica, I seek areas outside of the heavily trodden birding hot spots. The “Wings of Northern Costa Rica” trip surpassed ALL of my expectations. I absolutely loved birding the tropical dry forest of Guanacaste Province, but it didn’t stop there. We traveled from one life zone to another, exploring mangroves, marshlands, gulf waters (Nicoya), rainforests of 2 volcanoes (Tenorio and Rincón de la Vieja, with Miravalles Volcano close by) and 2 wildlife refuges (Palo Verde National Park; Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge). The beauty of our surroundings and unique diversity of wildlife were incredible and resulted in more than 250 bird species, many of which were “lifers” for me. Our stays at Celeste Mountain Lodge, La Ensenada, and Borinquen Lodge were especially exceptional. THANK YOU to Costa Rica Focus and to our outstanding guide, Mayer J., who so patiently brought out the best in all of us as photographers, birders, and nature lovers. Mayer taught us so much; I can’t wait to do it again.

Wonderful bird photography tour!

We just completed a 14-day bird photography tour with Costa Rica Focus and the experience was fantastic from start to finish. The level of client commitment and personalized service was outstanding. We have taken many bird tours with both large international companies and small local ones in South America, Tanzania, Central America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. Without question, Costa Rica Focus is by far the best company we have worked with. Jess was a pleasure to deal with. Her response time was nearly instantaneous; she answered all our questions, and helped us design a private tour that exactly fit our needs. The lodgings she chose were superb and provided us with wonderful birds right outside our bedroom door.

She kept in contact with us before during and after the tour and there wasn’t a moment during the entire tour that we didn’t feel well looked after. Our guide, Eric, was exceptional. His knowledge of Costa Rica birds is phenomenal. He was a wizard at finding birds and getting us great looks and photographs, even in some difficult dark jungle environments. We have gone on bird tours before and come home with a huge bird list only to ask ourselves when going over the list, “did we really see that bird?” Not so with Eric. He was unbelievably talented at getting us great looks at nearly every bird. We had an extremely high ratio of photos per bird encounter. He is also an outstanding photographer and provided tremendous photographic advice to help us get the best photographs possible. The trip was a perfect balance of serious birding and bird photography. Never once did we feel rushed. Eric answered every question with knowledge and grace. He even politely allowed my wife to practice her rudimentary Spanish throughout the tour.

A Birding Quest for My 5,000th Lifer

Costa Rica Focus excelled when tasked with organizing a 17-day, 16-night birding tour to show me the 53 birds I needed to see to make a lifetime total of 5,000.

Communications were virtually instantaneous as we negotiated a guided private trip for two at a relaxed pace with ample time at each locality. A day after my initial inquiry the co-owner of the company assumed responsibility for planning the complete itinerary. In the following weeks she coordinated the tour schedule with the availability of our international flights (we cashed in frequent flyer miles) and chose accommodations that would be conveniently located near the birds we were seeking. The birding guide they provided (see below) was superb.

Within five days of receiving my “wish list” of Costa Rican birds that would be “new” for me, she had prepared an amazing spreadsheet that detailed not only where one could see each target bird and the ease (or difficulty) of finding it, but also a list of birding sites and the number of target birds and the difficulty of finding them at each site. Awesome is an understatement.

The detailed final itinerary, fully illustrated with a map and sample birds to be seen at each locality, was then made available as a hard copy and on a smartphone app that could be consulted instantly wherever we were. With one exception (Tirimbina Lodge) the accommodations were very good to excellent.

Our driver/guide, Minor, is arguably the best bird guide in Costa Rica. With my “wish list” of 169 potential life birds in hand, he plotted each days’ drive to destinations for specific birds on the list. Minor has the almost magical ability to find target birds. He is an excellent and safe driver, taking us to the best places to dine for local specialties while seeming to know personally everyone in Costa Rica.