Hacienda Guachipelin Adventure Tours in the Rincon de La Vieja National Park, Costa Rica

It was advisable that we go on the Hacienda Guachipelin Adventure Tours in Rincon de La Vieja National Park moderately than happening one in all the tour packages supplied at our resort.

It’s a full day journey tour that features a cover tour, mountaineering, tubbing, horse again using, scorching spring and dirt bathtub.

We’re going to share our full expertise of at the present time of journey in Hacienda Guachipelin – it was properly price it!

Book the tour here.

Getting to Hacienda Guachipelin Adventure Tours

As we’d rented a automotive with one other couple from our resort for a few days, we bought GPS instructions for the National Park and set out on our personal. If you’re going to drive to Hacienda Guachipelin Adventure Tours, be sure to have a 4×4 automobile.

Once you get off of the Pan American Highway (Hwy 1) you’re on a really lengthy unpaved street (in indisputable fact that’s all our GPS known as it, ‘unpaved road’), filled with potholes, hills, and the occasional cow wandering down the street.

Insider journey tip: When you arrive at the entrance to Rincon de La Vieja National Park, you come to a gate the place they ask you to pay a toll to enter the park. Tell them you’re heading to Adventure Tours and also you don’t have to pay!

The tour contains lunch at the Hacienda Guachipelín Hotel. I had an area drink to start with, adopted by Mahi Mahi on a mattress of rice with some greens, and rice pudding for dessert. I loved the meal, in all probability greater than the meals at our resort!

If you book this tour online, it features a resort pick-up so that you don’t have to fret about attending to the park by yourself.

Canopy Tour

After lunch, we headed out to the cover. The very first thing they do is to get all of your gear fitted. This contains your harness, helmet and gloves. My spouse and I have been each fairly impressed with the harnesses they supply. Having completed a good quantity of labor in the leisure trade the place harnesses are a job requirement, we felt they paid excellent consideration to the security of their friends.

Next up was a quick introduction to zip-lining. While nonetheless on the floor they confirmed you the way to place your physique whereas on the line, the way to hold your steadiness, sluggish your self down, what to do when you stopped in the center of the line, and many others.

After the briefing, it’s time to go flying by way of Rincon de La Vieja. We began off with a reasonably lengthy line for our first run, which simply went by way of the forest.  introductory run.  The second run, in all probability the longest of all of them, goes over a canyon, with an unbelievable view when you have been wanting down as you flew overhead!

Next, you arrive at the rappelling line. Here your harness is connected to a rope and also you’re lowered, head first, straight down alongside a waterfall.  You then swing throughout the water to a different platform, and climb up at 40m ladder to the subsequent platform. This a part of the cover tour is non-compulsory, because it requires a bit extra bodily power than the relaxation. If you select to rappel down, there is no such thing as a method out apart from the ladder climb again up. Only one in all our occasion of 4 partook in this exercise.

After one other two zip strains, you arrive at the most difficult a part of the tour, mountaineering. You should climb throughout one rock wall after which down to a different platform, with the river operating beneath you. You then do a “tarzan swing’” to a platform on the different facet of the canyon.

Finally, it’s a must to climb one other rock wall straight as much as the subsequent zip-line platform. After one other quick rock climb, there’s a small stroll to the closing zip-line location.  The employees are excellent at guiding you thru this part of the tour.  Although I have to admit I used to be a bit not sure about my potential to finish it, it felt like an important accomplishment to achieve the finish!

After all of that, there’s one closing zip-line to the finish, which you could have the possibility of doing the wrong way up! We took group pictures on the final platform, after which had a brief stroll again to the Adventure Tours workplaces the place we took off our gear.

One of the joys of being there at the finish of September is that’s was pouring rain throughout many parts of the cover tour. In some methods, this added to the expertise. It felt like a much bigger accomplishment doing the ziplines and mountaineering in that climate.

Hot Springs

The subsequent a part of the day would usually embody horseback using, however on condition that it was getting a later in the day (we didn’t arrive till virtually 1pm) and that it was pouring rain exterior, we skipped this and went straight to the scorching springs.

The scorching springs are positioned about one other 10-15 minute drive up the street from the principal Hacienda Guachipelin Adventure Tours workplace. They’re not marked very properly – however there’s a signal about 100m earlier than you get to them. The entrance is positioned proper at the backside of a steep hill on the street. There’s a bridge over the water right here, you possibly can park your automotive on both facet of it.

There are change services positioned a brief stroll into the forest in the direction of the scorching springs.  A employees member from Adventure Tours was at the change services keeping track of everybody’s belongings.  The swimming pools are positioned simply previous the change services.  There are 3 swimming pools: one scorching, one medium, and one cool.  If I needed to guess that their temperatures, I’d say they have been about 107F, 103F and perhaps 90F.  The scorching swimming pools are fed with water from a close-by volcano. You can see the place the scorching water is feeding into the pool.

There’s a bridge over the water main to a different cooler pool, however this one was closed on the day we visited as a result of the water ranges have been too excessive.

The swimming pools have been very stress-free, and felt nice on the “new muscles” that we found whereas zip-lining!  The swimming pools have been very fairly, with just a few different friends exhibiting up whereas we have been there.

Driving Back

It was nonetheless gentle out after we began driving again, though it shortly bought darkish. As we’d found on the remainder of our journey, the roads in Costa Rica (even the highways and extra city areas) have very poor avenue lighting, and no shoulders. You should be very attentive to the pedestrians and cyclists in the darkish.

Our return journey was additionally slowed down as a result of we have been caught behind a line of college buses, with no room to move. It seems college students in Costa Rica go to high school for a number of hours in the morning, after which once more later in the afternoon, with a break in the center when the warmth is at its worst.

Hacienda Guachipelin Adventure Tours: 5/5

Would suggest this tour to anybody who desires an thrilling, adrenaline pumped solution to discover the Costa Rican panorama!