We Got Scammed in Costa Rica

CAT TOURS ARE SCAMMERS!

Well, if all good things come to an end, we got home from Costa Rica, tired, suntanned and with a squished Panama hat.

We had lots of photos and even made some new friends.

However, imagine our surprise when we got our credit card bill. We had booked a few days trips with CAT Tours of Costa Rica. They canceled one of our tours the day before the tour. We asked for the receipt but were assured that the charge didn't go through on our credit card. They seemed like a trustworthy company to book a tour with and we didn't think they would rip us off. But rip us off they did!

They charged us $130 american dollars for a trip to the rain forest. We were really hoping to go on this trip because we had never seen a rain forest, plus the trip offered zip-lining which sounded like fun, swinging by rope from tree to tree.

We got home and found the charge for this canceled trip on our credit card statement. We contacted CAT Tours repeatedly and they kept saying the tour was not canceled and that we did take the tour. They were lying to us and keeping our $130.

I read around the internet and found a site which had an article about it on scams in Costa Rica by CAT Tours. It must be a common experience for people to get scammed by this company. It's really left a bad taste in our mouth about Costa Rica. I did some other searching on the internet and found out there are many other tourist scams in Costa Rica. I guess if Costa Rican travel businesses can't operate honestly they're going to lose a lot of business to tourists. Business I thought they wanted and needed. That's the last time we'll use CAT TOURS because they're such tourist scam artists.

Coco Beach Costa Rica

We went to Coco Beach for the day with a few of our friends. We took two taxis from the Sol Papagayo Hotel and paid $20 for each way.

Coco Beach was pretty nice. There are lots of shops to buy souvenirs, lots of restaurants, bars and night clubs. There's a large grocery store there where you can buy everything and it's pretty cheap. We stocked up on cigarettes, cheap wines, some fruit drinks and snacks.

The beach is quite nice with a lot of yachts and boats out on the water. It's a white sand beach with clean blue water. Most of the people we saw on the beach were locals. We had lunch at this greasy spoon type chicken place, I can't for the life of me remember it's name, but the lunch was a bargain price.

We walked around the shops and bought a few things. Dave bought his wife and my husband blowup crocodiles so they can use then around the pool because neither of them can swim. They were really cute floatation devices for kids. Lots of pool fun was to be had later at the pool with the Crocs.

My husband and I bought a few t-shirts, flip flops, earrings (very nice beaded ones), a long sun dress and a couple of shirts which are either called Bermuda or Hawaiian shirts. Don't know the lingo these days. I also bought a beautiful Panama hat for $10 (remember, we were supposed to go to Panama) and I'd always wanted a Panama hat. The sad thing about the Panama hat was that I put it in the luggage compartment overhead and this fat lady threw her back hat on it, totally crushing the thing. I was so upset because I'd always wanted a Panama hat and it was completely destroyed.

Oh, well, I have to get to Panama one day is the meaning of this lesson learned. But we did get to Nicaragua and see some nice things and some lovely little Colonial Granada hotels.  The whole place was really charming and we went and saw not only Granada, but a volcano and many other cities - all in one day, leaving early in the morning and getting back late at night.  It was so exhausting.

The stores at Coco beach had lots of great souvenirs to buy and going to Coco Beach is worth the day trip.

Weather in Costa Rica is hot, hot, hot.

Volcanic Sand Beaches

The beach near our hotel was a black volcanic sand beach. It is called, as I said, Panama Beach. It was an okay beach, but nothing spectacularly beautiful, unless you walked quite a while down the beach. It gave me the impression that it was kinda uncared for.

Thought I'd post this picture of my feet after a walk on the black sand beach. The sand is really black, no kidding! Although it's not the greatest beach in Costa Rica, it was okay for strolls along the beach during the early morning and the day time. It offered a change of scenery from the pool at our hotel. However, we were warned not to go out on the beach at night because it could be dangerous. So we never did.

We went to some other beaches including Coco Beach which was a $20 taxi ride away. Coco Beach is a little beach town, lots of restaurants, bars, clubs, tourist shops selling stuff. But more about that later.

Bonus: walking on sand is good for your feet – it's almost a free pedicure, once you get your feet cleaned off from the volcanic sand.

I included a pic of my feet with the volcanic sand on them and a picture of Panama Beach by our hotel.

The Town of Liberia Costa Rica

We spent a day in the town of Liberia, Costa Rica, taking a bus (which didn't come very frequently) from the main road near our hotel. The heat was beating down on us, and just walking for five minutes was a hot and sweaty task. By the time we got to the main road to catch the bus, we were really feeling the heat.

The bus was not air conditioned, just a regular bus, full of tired hot people. The bus took almost an hour to get to the town of Liberia. We had no idea where to go, but we needed a bank first of all and there were plenty of banks there. That, is, there were plenty of banks and also American banks and one Canadian bank. I needed some cash and we had been told that there was shopping in Liberia. After the bank, we started to walk around, asking some people if there were some nice churches, shopping, restaurants and we got directions and started walking.

On our way, we saw lots of North American fast food joints such as McDonald's and Pizza Hut. Nothing special and those are the last places I would eat anyway. We kept walking, looking for maybe the historical part of town. It's interesting, to see this little town, it's busy, people going about their business, children rushing out of school or into school, vendors selling stuff. There were lots of shops, many tourist shops selling t-shirts etc.

We stopped in to a couple of shops and my husband bought a couple of t shirts. We saw a couple of churches and then walked to the end of one street and found a little white Colonial church, probably quite old, but not cared for and locked up. We took some photos and then found a little place to have some lunch. There were some shops selling some high end goods, but we weren't really interested in shopping.

The day was long and tiring, the heat making it worse. We caught a bus back to the main road of the hotel, sort of exhausted. Liberia is nothing special and if I came back here, I wouldn't bother. We would later go a couple of times to Coco Beach where the shopping for tourists is better and there are more choices for eating and it's a much nicer place.

'til later, Costa Rica.