I've been reading about a variety of hiking tours that you can go on with a hired guide. I'm trying to figure out which ones are the best, as we can't pay to do them all - probably only one or two. My family (husband, daughter and I) all love nature and hiking. We hike all the time in our state of Colorado. We love to go to new places to explore.

I found a couple on the Manzanillo-Caribe site that sound interesting. This is the link: www.manzanillo-caribe.com/do/land/landen.html - The two I was curious about are the Hike to Punta Mona/Return by Boat and Tour to the Yorkin Indigenous Reserve. On the 2nd one it says that you hike, go in a traditional canoe up the river, go to the village, have a traditional meal, see some stuff, etc. I am really interested in learning about all the different people of Costa Rica, so that second one seems really appealing to me.

Then I also read about two on Atec's site. ateccr.org/index.php/… The two I was interested in were the Chimuri Reserve and Kekoldi Hike and the Hike to Waterfall.

Of course I read about the awesome Nature Observatorio also and I REALLY want to go check that out. We can't afford to spend the night, so we'd have to do a half day hiking tour.

I was also scanning through old posts on here and saw someone talking about a hike near Cahuita (?) that has some old lookout tower (from WWII?). They said it was really hard to find and that you'd need a guide.

So - if you were me and could only do TWO hired hikes. Which ones would you do and why?

Keep in mind we are going to go out fishing probably with Wahoo for one day- don't they take us near Punta Mona?

Also, are there any places that we can hike on our own? I was also reading about waterfalls in old posts as well. We'd also like to see some of those as well. When we were in Mal Pais, we rode our quad to Montezuma and hiked those falls by ourselves. Well...sort of! We ran into some locals when we were on the trail and they helped us around the tricky spots, which was really nice!

We will have a car. However, I know some of the roads near MP had huge water holes that I'm not sure you could drive a car through! Is it the same around the PV/Manzanillo area?

Thanks! I appreciate your wealth of information! TripAdvisor is the BEST!