No hot water to shower! Everything else was OK, but we were promised hot water.

After two wonderful weeks travelling independently in Costa Rica, we arrived in this lodge, where everything seems to be planned for you to spend a lot of money and feel completely stupid. Not the best way of ending our holidays!

Maybe we were unlucky, but our guide seemed to hate his job. He mocked previous tourists with the boatman (ok, the tour was in English, but some of us understand Spanish perfectly and that gives a horrible and unprofessional impression), ignored our questions and treated us as children that need to be repeated things a hundred times and being told off. Unfortunately, we had to stick to the same guide for 3 days if we wanted to explore the canals.

But the worst was yet to come. When trying to pay our drinks during checkout, we discovered that there were some bills that had wrongly been charged to our room. It took us quite a while to sort that out and had to leave in a rush, forgetting our passports in the safe. When we realized that we had left them behind we were already in the boat, and the only solution Mawamba could offer was to bring them to land if we paid 200USD on the spot. Friendly, aren't they? Despite knowing the difficulty of recovering your valuables after you've left (the only way to leave is in their boats), they do not ask if you have anything in the safe as a standard checkout procedure. A lucrative business, isn't it?. In any case, I would not recommend anyone to stay in a place where such abusive practices are the norm. Nice as the pool may be.

We really liked Mawamba Lodge. Its basic wooden lodges fit in perfectly with its isolated environment, and what bliss to get away from cars and the TV for a couple of days and unwind in beautiful exotic grounds. Enjoy the great pool and bar area and the tree frog garden, where (yes), you do actually see the famous red-eyed green tree frog. There are trails which are easy to follow yourself and a delightful butterfly garden.

You eat communally in the restaurant at fixed hours but the food, while limited in selection, is fresh – plenty of salads and fresh fruit – and you get to share stories with fellow travellers. Don’t go to Mawamba Lodge if you want a lively night life as everyone goes to bed early there.

You can’t swim in the Caribbean here and the beach is a mess but with such an exotic setting, who cares?! The morning boat trips from the Lodge are fantastic with plenty of sightings of wild life and the sounds of the tropical forest add to the magic.

If you want to keep in touch with the outside world, there is an Internet facility with a charge of $4 per hour.

We stayed two nights at the Mawamba Lodge as part of a 10-day Mountain Travel Sobek trip called “Adventures in Costa Rica”. It is a first-rate facility for what it is, i.e., a well-maintained jungle lodge (not a luxury hotel) located in a beautiful area, accessible only by boat or small plane, and offering boating, kayaking and wildlife viewing that is probably unparalleled in Costa Rica. I have never seen such thick and teeming jungle located so close to such wild and undeveloped seashore, with everything viewable, walk-able or boat-able from the lodge. Our enjoyment was greatly enhanced by the presence of Alonso Lezama, our guide from Rios Tropicales, who brought us into the lodge on kayaks, and led and talked us through the jungle waterways by boat and kayak. He is a fantastic Costa Rican with boundless enthusiasm, vast knowledge and great communications skills (English and Spanish). I believe that Rios Tropicales offers a two-day, (kayak-in/boat-out) visit from San Jose to Mawamba that equates to what we did through Sobek. Ask for Alonso as your guide.