Costa Rica has been a whitewater destination for years but most tour companies run the same 1-2 rivers every week and have been doing this for years. One of our primary goals in starting Amazing Vacations was to create trips that would allow us to share multi-day trips on not only the standard “classic” trips that nearly every kayaker who has paddled in Costa Rica has had the chance to do, but to open up new areas so that people would be excited to come back and do new rivers each year.
As our team has researched the rivers in Costa Rica, we’ve learned about dozens of rivers, many of which are rarely paddled by locals and never visited by commercial rafting companies. Our team has made several trips to new areas over the past summer and made new friends by exploring these new areas. We were so excited to do our first official Pacific trip with over 14 people. Some were in rafts, most were Kayaks.
Here’s a recap of each river we paddled with photos and our overall experience.
Day 1: Arrived in Turrialba and Paddled the Pejibaye
Most of us had an overnight red-eye flight which put us on the ground at 7AM. Unfortunately we had our first casualty at the airport. Two paddles ended up getting snapped in transit, but the airline workers at Delta were super nice and within about 20 minutes paperwork had been filled out for insurance for the paddles. Not how we’d wanted to start the trip, but we have some great Werner paddles that got to be broken in in place of the broken paddles.
We drove directly to pickup boats and get outfitted and were on the river by about 10:30. The Pejibaye is a great river to warm up on. There are some fun surfing spots along the way but nothing that should be too exciting. We had a great run and then headed up to our special spot higher up along the river to have lunch.
We at an amazing lunch and then headed down the hill to start our second run. The upper section of this river is by far one of the most beautiful put-ins I’ve ever experienced. You are completely covered in the jungle canopy and this place is special because it’s where our head guide and instructor Arnaldo actually learned to kayak for the first time. The river is so much fun on the upper section as well.
If you are a class III boater, there is no better way to start your trip than by running this section of river.
By the end of the day, we were completely exhausted from the overnight flight and were excited to arrive at the Turrialba Bed and Breakfast. For dinner, we hire a private chef and we ate family style around a large round table with a Lazy Susan in the middle. We ate the most delicious breaded Sea Bass with all kinds of extras. The food was so good I think nearly everyone had at least seconds or thirds and then we had one of our famous desserts to top off the night.
Great day on the river and an incredible way to start out the week.
Day 2: Upper Upper Pacuare
One of the things we’ve been most excited about is opening up some of the
The following is a report from our scouting trip of Pacific Rivers in Costa Rica. More writeup to come soon.
