We were scheduled to dock in Puerto Caldera, but we docked in Puntarenas instead. Apparently, Puntarenas is nicer than Puerto Caldera, as it’s a cruise port while Puerto Caldera is an industrial port. And Puntarenas was indeed nice, with a beach (where locals visit) right off the port with a nice market place. We did have a little time to visit this market place after our tour.
We booked “Eco Tropical Mangrove River Cruise.” The cruise was pleasant and saw a lot of wildlife, like crocodiles, iguanas, anteater, and lots of birds. There was one bummer though. There are two jungle river cruise tours offered in Puntarenas/Puerto Caldera, and one costs $5 more than the other. We chose the more expensive one, because from the name of the tour and photo, I thought it would be with “Eco Jungle Cruises” company, which seemed to have better facility and boats (with padded seats.) But the actual boat company we went with was “Crocodile Man Tour” (no paddings on the seats!) and other groups were going with “Jungle Crocodile Safari”. Not a big deal really, but if it didn’t matter which one you booked, why do you offer two different tours with different prices? (Though it’s possible that the change was made, due to us docking in Puntarenas rather than Puerto Caldera.) Oh well. We did enjoy the tour though, even without the padding 😉
Crunchii's Cruise Blog 