About Us | Costa Rica Travel Experience

Costa Rica Travel Experience is a destination management company. That is a specific thing.

It means we are not a booking platform that routes you to local operators you have never heard of. It means we are not a US-based travel agency that calls its Costa Rica contacts and hopes for the best. It means we are in the country, managing the full trip, from the first private transfer through the final airport drop-off.

Our team is based in Heredia, in the Central Valley, within driving distance of most of what makes Costa Rica worth visiting. We know the back roads, the local guides worth trusting, and the difference between a hotel that photographs well and one your clients will actually love waking up in.

Pura Vida is not a tagline for us. It is the reason we do this work. Costa Rica is one of the most biodiverse, genuinely welcoming, and endlessly interesting countries in the world. We have the privilege of introducing it to people for the first time, and to agents who want to send their clients somewhere they will come back from changed.

Before Mario built Costa Rica Travel Experience, he was a guide.

He walked the trails. He knew which waterfalls were worth the climb and which ones were worth skipping. He knew the vendors who were honest about what they were selling and the ones who were not. He learned the country not from a brochure but from the inside, one tour at a time.

When he started this company, he brought that knowledge with him. The goal was simple: build the kind of operation he would have wanted to work with as a guide. One where the planning was real, the communication was honest, and the traveler arrived prepared instead of anxious.

That is still how he runs it. As Mario says, 'I like to show always the good, the bad, and the ugly. That is part of what makes us real.'