We decided to do a full day trip to Tenorio Volcano National Park. It is about a 3 hour drive from Tamarindo. We did a private tour to keep the number of people in the van to a minimum. We had two tour guides who I’m pretty sure were a father son team. We believe they were both named Warren. (The man that picked up from the airport was also Warren.) They picked us up at 6:30 AM which meant it was too early to get the free hotel breakfast. The one thing that Warren and Warren really liked, was dogs. They know some of the dogs on the drive that aren’t fed. So we made a couple of stops on the way to feed dogs. They dogs looked so happy to see them come with food. They also made a stop at a bakery to get us breakfast.

Part of the reason the drive is 3 hours is because there are very few traffic lights. I think we saw maybe two total in the whole drive. Our guides were great at pointing things out on the drive. The tour in the park was to see the rain forrest and animals. The guides explained that we would see more animals outside of the park entrance because of the people in the park. They really did take their time in finding us animals before we entered the park. They would setup a telescope so we could see the birds up close. We made probably over 10 stops on the way to the park to see different birds. We saw sloths, monkeys, snakes, termites, butterflies, beetle, lots of birds and a poison dart frog. The guides were very excited to see a couple of king vultures perched on a tree. They said they usually only see them flying around. We saw some tracks of a tapir in the park but luckily didn’t see one. I didn’t know what a tapir was but it is basically a 400 pound animal that can attack without warning It looks a lot like a pig.

The park was 5 km hike out and back through the rain forrest. We were lucky on the way out to the waterfall because it was dry. Although it was extremely humid and climbing up and down a lot of stairs was quite the workout. We made it to the waterfall and you could start to hear some thunder in the distance. We continued on a little bit to see the Blue Lagoon but the guides recommended we head back after that. The thunder was getting closer and we were in the middle of the rain forrest. The thunder was getting so loud you could feel the ground move and then it poured. I’m glad they had us turn back when they did because that would have been a very muddy difficult hike. Overall it was a great day tour with Warren and Warren. The only downside was the younger Warren lost his phone on one of the stops. We looked for a good hour but he never did find his phone.

All of the following photos are animals we saw in or around the park.

Pictures of the park.

Although we were all soaking wet, they stopped at a restaurant for lunch on the way back down the volcano. We were the only people there for lunch but it was probably one of the best meals I have ever had on a trip. There wasn’t a menu but they made you a fresh juice with local fruit and then a typical Costa Rican meal.