About a year ago, my wife and I were looking for some volunteering opportunities in Costa Rica. We planned to stay 4 months in Costa Rica to see all the incredibles things there was to see, and wanted to help at the same time. A Canadian organization referred us to Tropical Adventure for volunteering as a family, since the trip was with our 3 kids (12, 11 and 10 years old). Well, we were not disappointed! Tropical Adventures has lots of very interesting volunteering opportunities for families, so we discussed which one would be the best. We finally decided that we wanted our volunteering to include helping kids, so we chose the Hojancha Community Program offered by Tropical Adventures . The plan was to stay in Hojancha for 3 weeks.

We stayed at a host family house for the duration of the project. And we liked it so much there, that we extended our volunteering for 1 week more! It was an incredible experience. We worked with children in the library, and assisted with their summer camp and fields trips! We also worked at the Senior Center and at the botanical garden. Working with these people in Hojancha and with the other volunteers was very interesting, and we all quickly learned Spanish as well!

Immediately after leaving La Fortuna, we called Tropical Adventures again, to find a volunteering project involving turtles. They quickly suggested us their Osa In-Water Sea Turtle Program . It was incredible. We helped the local team capture sea turtles, tagged them, measured them and released them. We also planted mangrove trees. The kids and us learned a lot about turtles and the fragile ecosystem they live in.

This volunteering was such an incredible experience that we asked Scott at Tropical Adventures for another volunteering opportunity for our family. We ended up working for a week at an orphanage in La Fortuna, near the magnificient Arenal Volcano. Entertaining those young kids was a life changing experience for the 5 of us. We really felt that what we did mattered.

So we are now back at home in Canada. Needless to say we had a great time in Costa Rica, and volunteering as a family was an amazing experience that we will never forget. Thank you Tropical Adventures.

Jonathan, Sylvie, Gabriel, Philippe and Coralie