Family Volunteering in Costa Rica at Playa Tortuga

I’ve been meaning to get in contact to say thank you for your help in the lead up to our trip to Playa Tortuga in February and to tell you how it went.

We had the most incredible time! We all absolutely loved it and completely fell in love with Costa Rica – what a beautiful country!

The experiences we had at the reserve were amazing and something we will never forget – wading through swamps in the dark looking for caimans and releasing baby turtles on the beach were particular highlights!

Gaby and all the staff at the reserve were so helpful, knowledgeable and friendly and the food was delicious. We really enjoyed the communal feel and met some really lovely other families who were there at the same time.

We had one of the best experiences of our lives as a family and loved every minute of it.

Thanks again, we are already thinking about where our next adventure could be!

With a mad about wildlife 6 year old it seemed like a reasonable choice to go to Central America for a trip of a lifetime. But as a veteran backpacker and not one to follow the beaten track I decided we should involve ourselves with some volunteering and animal conservation work. I reached out to Vicky at Working Abroad and from the minute we chatted, I felt at ease and confident we were choosing the right organisation. Costa Rica was the perfect destination.

Vicky quickly directed me towards several programmes but Playa Tortuga stood out for us during our allocated dates as it was the optimum time for releasing the baby hatchling turtles to the ocean.

We were warmly welcomed to Playa Tortuga by the incredible team there and within 10 minutes of our briefing, 120 little baby turtles were frantically coming out of their nest and needed our attention! We were exhausted from the flight and the transfer, but overwhelmed with excitement to help out with exhuming them, weighing and measuring them and then racing to the ocean before sunset to release them to the sea! Wow!

The week just got better and better as more and more babies hatched under our supervision. Playa Tortuga laid out a schedule for our week and we became part of a dynamic team not only aiding with the turtle monitoring but also in the butterfly lab and garden, counting and feeding caterpillars, watching the metamorphosis, collecting butterfly eggs and then releasing new butterflies into the garden. My daughter loved how they would land on her clothing and hands and especially warmed to the Siproeta species and of course Blue Morpho the iconic Costa Rican beauty.

During our week we helped to monitor monkey movement and behaviour, regularly listening to the howlers at the reserve and seeing the capuchins high in the canopy crossing above us.

We hunted for bats, macaws and other birds, caiman, crocs and found lots of other wildlife enroute. All the data is stored and the animals checked, some of them tagged, measured and weighed to ensure their health. We were also able to watch all the footage from the camera traps which was fascinating especially as 70% of them are nocturnal.

The humidity was very high and the rain unseasonably heavy as it was supposedly dry season. This made walking around on some of the tracks quite tricky even with the wellies that the reserve provided but it was all so worth it and we enjoyed every muddy puddle!
We’ve already decided that in 12 years when my daughter is 18 and those baby turtles we released to the sea return to their respective beaches as Mamas to lay their eggs, that we will return again to lend a hand!

In the meantime, we are already wondering where in the world we can go next to find our next animal adventure!

Wow, what an amazing experience that was! Tilly did not miss out on school this December, she went to Jungle School at the Playa Tortuga project in Costa Rica instead and learnt SO much more. I can honestly say it was unreal in so many ways. From the moment we arrived we were straight into the experience with opportunities to exhume baby turtles from their nest in the hatchery to learning about Blue Morphos in the butterfly lab and garden. Morning patrols, bird watching, camera trap retrieval, reptile monitoring, bat walks… there was so much to get involved in! Thanks for all the support you gave us in the build up to our trip… we’re already thinking about what we should do next!

We had the most amazing experience and I can’t stop telling people about it, I know friends have already booked with you and lots more are looking into the possibility.

I can’t describe to you how I felt while in Costa Rica, I felt like the whole family was healing, I was so calm and on the morning when we left, the taxi driver must have thought that someone had died! I was so emotional and even my husband shed a tear, Ellie and Charlie and myself must have cried for a full half hour in the back of the taxi!

We were so overwhelmed by the whole experience, the sense of belonging and community. The work done at Playa Tortuga is amazing and the staff are so inspiring. I feel so lucky to have been able to give my children such a perspective altering experience. So much so that we spent a lot of our time in Mexico the following week wishing we were back in Costa Rica. The fact that the children would rather be in 100% humidity with no air con, than in an all inclusive hotel with everything on tap spoke volumes. We all viewed everything differently. I think once you have observed animals in their own environment and respected their habitat it is very hard to witness animals ‘tamed’ by human interaction, and despite signs all over the hotel asking guests not to feed animals, it wasn’t the case and there was a very resounding NO from all of us when the hotel offered to take us to a dolphin show!

I feel privileged to have observed the animals that we were lucky enough to see. I was very lucky to witness a turtle on the beach and felt honoured to collect the eggs and put them safely in the hatchery, I think they may be due to hatch soon!! If you were to ask any of my 3 children what their favourite thing was about their holiday they will all say it was walking through the river!!

It’s funny as one of the mum’s back home asked me what actual help a child can be on a volunteer holiday and I explained that they can do a lot, but the most important thing is the mind set and the need to change that they will take away with them and spread that across the rest of whatever they do in life. That’s also something I found so good about where we were, the weekly beach clean up with the locals, and the all work Sara and the other staff do reaching out to the local community and teaching the next generation about conservation and our impact on the wildlife, that’s what is so important and that’s what is amazing about the family volunteer holidays.

I think we will always want to be part of this type of holiday from now on.

We all had such an amazing time and there were a lot of tears when we left. Even though we were only there for a week we really felt like we had become part of the team and loved every minute of it. It helped that we were with such a nice group of volunteers who I’m pretty sure we’ll stay in touch with in the future.

So thank you and the whole team for everything, and sorry for the drama just before we arrived!

We are hoping to return at some point in the future to experience everything we weren’t able to this time round.

I just wanted to let you know what a fantastic trip we had to Reserve Playa Tortuga. We were lucky enough to be able to help to release around 100 baby turtles at 5am one morning. It was an incredible experience for us all to be involved in this.

We also found a turtle nest and took 105 eggs to the hatchery, they will be released in April. We helped monitor monkeys and bats, collected butterfly eggs and larvae, saw a puma on the camera footage, saw snakes and lizards and we went bird watching. The highlight of the week for Freddie was the night patrol searching for crocs and caimans and then catching them to do research. Just amazing!

The staff are all so knowledgeable and it was great to feel like we were helping to make a difference.
Freddie has plans to return when he is older to be Oscar’s assistant!Thank you so much for your help leading up to the trip and always answering my many questions.

My family and I stayed at Tortuga Reserve in April 2023. What a fantastic time we had!

We are a family of 4 – our children are 10 and 12 years old, and staying at Tortuga was a real highlight of our time in Costa Rica.

All communication was excellent – right from first contacting Vicky at workingabroad.com a full year before our trip, up to receiving what’s app messages from staff at Tortuga a couple of days before we arrived. We were given a lovely welcome by Linnea, who showed us around and talked us through our all-important schedule. Our family room was basic but perfectly serviceable and became a real home-from-home during our stay. Without exception, all the staff and volunteers made us feel welcome and we were involved in activities pretty much as soon as we arrived.

Our children loved their time at Tortuga, and both say it was their favourite part of the holiday. They were a great age for having a bit of independence and spending time with the older interns and volunteers – going off to check the hatchery without boring Mum and Dad in tow!

Other activities included monitoring the local capuchin monkey population and helping another of the interns with their studies on scarlet macaws; working in the butterfly garden – finding the right leaves for different caterpillar species, carefully transferring chrysalis into a special cupboard and finally releasing butterflies into the butterfly enclosure; visiting a local coral laboratory; collecting plastic from a local beach; planting new samplings and looking after the new mangrove nursery and going on bird watching walks.

My early morning walks (5.30am is a good time to set off!) down to the beach will be a memory I always hold dear – the peace and tranquillity of hearing only the bird call and the waves in such an unspoiled setting is pretty special.
Thank you Tortuga, for a wonderful stay – wish it could have been for longer!

Our family (2 adults and 2 ten year olds) volunteered with Volunteer-abroad at Playa Tortuga for ten days which was a fantastic experience. Vicky helped us every step of the way from choosing the right project for us as a family, through the application process to helping with the many questions we had. We all thoroughly enjoyed all our time there and were sad when we had to leave. There was always something going on at the reserve which meant there was always a wide range of different activities to complete – whether this was undertaking monkey surveys, helping in the butterfly farm, looking for tent bats or monitoring macaw behaviour amongst other things! Our favourite activity was helping release the baby turtles back into the wild after counting, weighing and measuring them. The food was excellent, and it was great that you got to help yourself to breakfast and dinner – always lots of supplies to choose from. We loved it here, learnt so much and will always remember our time there and the friends we made. Truly unforgettable – and something that the kids will remember forever.

We would give it 5 stars out of five! The girls want to give it 10 out of 5!

Vicky expertly guided us through the application and booking process, answering all our questions quickly and efficiently, and Oscar the Director at the reserve provided a detailed volunteer manual; so we felt very prepared and excited ahead of the trip although we were slightly nervous about how our first family volunteer experience would go in a tropical country with all the challenges that bring (heat, humidity, insects, unusual food etc.)

We need not have worried – words cannot express how truly amazing this week was!

As soon as we arrived at the reserve we were given a very warm welcome and tour by the staff and fellow volunteers, setting us at ease straight away. Arriving on a Sat lunchtime, we didn’t have any duties to do that day so we settled into the basic but comfortable room and headed to the glorious, palm tree & rainforest lined beach – encountering a cheeky troupe of white-faced capuchin monkeys along the way playing in the treetops!

Over the course of the week, we were there in December, we were incredibly blessed to be part of 5 turtle releases (multiple nests hatched whilst we were there containing nearly 1,000 babies, all released safely to the sea.) We were also very lucky to excavate a nest ourselves – digging through the sand to get the little fellas out safe and sound is an experience I will never forget. Our nest contained 63 babies and 21 unhatched eggs (which are examined for data gathering) – all wriggly, cute and desperate to get to the ocean, which they did at sunset after we’d weighed and measured them.

In between volunteer duties, we had time off to relax, eat and play games (lots and lots of Top Trumps!) Ryan, the volunteer coordinator, often takes volunteers out on trips to the local area, we were lucky to go on two waterfall trips in the week we stayed. Ryan has young children himself so was great with us and was impressed with Amelie’s abundance of energy and growing knowledge of the rainforest.

The week was an awesome bonding experience and the special, unique memories we made, we will treasure forever. So incredibly proud of how Amelie adapted to the environment and really made the most of every opportunity. It was a real privilege to be a small part of the excellent work Oscar and the rest of the team do at Playa Tortuga.

“My daughter and I had an AMAZING experience in Reserva Playa Tortuga!! We met so many wonderful new people and the staff was wonderful also! We definitely recommend it! We learned so much from them and got to have some once in a lifetime moments together.”

On planning our family sabbatical we kept a lookout for places where we could volunteer with kids. It formed an important part of the ethos behind our trip, to open our kid’s minds about the world. We wanted to find a way of contributing to the communities we travelled in and felt that joining an organised volunteer programme would be a good, and safe, way of doing this.

We connected with, Working Abroad, to identify suitable volunteering opportunities in Costa Rica. Reserva Playa Tortuga stood out as a place where we could get involved in wildlife conservation. Many of the programmes they run have activities that are suitable for kids too, and they are mindful of volunteer safety, whatever their age. During our seven days with the reserve, we monitored bats and monkeys, counted macaws, planted coconut trees, took part in a beach clean and helped to start an inventory of reptiles, amphibians and insects.

Our highlights were seeing animals in their natural environment. Unlike some of the busy national parks in Costa Rica, these animals haven’t adapted to human visitors. We learnt how to behave so we could observe the animals without scaring them. Seeing capuchin monkeys at rest and howler monkeys at play was a privilege. One of my favourite memories is of Charlie asking Graciela if basilisk lizards could run across ‘rough’ water (rapids). Before Graciela had a chance to answer Charlie watched a basilisk race across a rapid section of the river. That surpasses searching for answers on the internet.

In our normal lives, we don’t get many opportunities to work as a family team. At home the kids have chores, and when we go camping they are given jobs to help out. Volunteering with them gave us a chance to really work together, an experience I would highly recommend to any family. The boys put as much effort in as any of the volunteers working with us that week and were always full of chatter and questions. We were so proud of the way they got involved and always with a positive attitude.

Photo credit: Deborah Patterson / Grand Adventure Story

We travelled around Costa Rica for a month and a family vote at the end of the holiday concluded that the Playa Tortuga project was the best and most rewarding part.

In January it was hot and extremely humid but the amazing experiences we had far outweighed the discomfort of this. The highlight was of course the baby turtles. We were too late in the season for the turtles to be nesting but we were lucky enough to be there when a nest hatched. We were tasked with weighing and measuring the wriggling babies (the kids are encouraged to be 100% hands-on with this) and then later in the day we released them into the Pacific, which was incredibly emotional. We also worked with butterflies, went on two night-time snake hunts (a highlight for our 6-year old son), a jungle walk, a monkey hunt to record behaviour and general wildlife sporting. We were lucky enough to see a red-eyed tree frog and a coati.

The interns there were all so attentive, knowledgeable and patient. Oscar runs the reserve. He was determined to make sure we were happy, busy and felt useful. This place is a fantastic experience for the whole family and one we will never forget. The accommodation is basic but adequate. The food is outstanding! We ate better at the reserve than most of the meals out we had elsewhere!! The Playa Tortuga project is highly recommended for those with a genuine interest in wildlife and not afraid of some hard work.

You can read more about the Lea Family’s volunteering adventure in Costa Rica in this blog article.