Family adventure holiday, Costa Rica and Panama

This Hands On Adventure gives you a chance to play a real part in the fight for conservation on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. You’ll spend 3 days at a turtle conservation project near Tortuguero National Park. As well as assisting with the daily research and patrol (to prevent poaching) your visit will be involved in measuring and recording turtle activity, tagging the animals, counting their eggs and camouflaging their nests. Each night, from March to September, a resident marine biologist leads a group of volunteers on ‘beach patrol’ to ensure the turtle population can nest safely and their movements can be recorded. You’ll patrol from 3 to 5 hours a night to depending on the numbers of turtles coming ashore – the huge leatherback turtle nest in their hundreds.

Our small group adventures are designed to impact as little as possible on the regions through which we travel – this trip is no exception. We work closely with a Costa Rican agent who employs local guides, drivers and the Group Leader on our behalf and money from our visit reaches a wide range of people from local hoteliers to restaurateurs. Our small groups have minimal impact on the environment, and our interaction with local people helps demonstrate the importance of preserving the region’s cultural heritage and natural importance.

For every person who travels with us a contribution is made to the Fundacion Neotropica, which protects the rainforest and educates people about conservation.

Our Responsible Travel Code: Clients who travel with us will automatically receive a copy of our Responsible Travel leaflet. This contains details and advice on how you can make a positive difference when you travel. If you would like a copy in advance of travel please contact us.

Charity Partnerships: We work in partnership with the following charities. SOS Children is the world’s largest orphan and abandoned children charity, helping some of the world’s most vulnerable children whose parents are not there for them. We also support Friends of Conservation – an international charity committed to working with local people to develop a balance between their needs and the wildlife with which they share the natural habitat and ecosystems. Other charities that we work closely with include the Born Free Foundation, an animal welfare charity working to prevent animal suffering in captivity and to protect them in the wild, the Galapagos Conservation Trust - a UK charity that raises funds and awareness for the conservation of the Galapagos Islands, and The Travel Foundation, a UK charity that has been established to promote responsible travel practises throughout the whole of the travel industry.

Carbon Balancing: Global warming is a real issue and is a direct result of your travel. We have teamed up with the Tourism Industry Carbon Offset Service to give you the opportunity to offset the carbon emissions from your flight. You’ll be asked upon booking if you want to donate to the solar stove and poverty reduction project we are supporting in South Africa – with set amounts from £4. As a company we offset the carbon emissions from all staff travel and office energy use in full.

Our Foundation: We’ve highlighted a few of the ways in which we offer our support to various charitable initiatives, both financially and otherwise, and now you can too. We have set up our own foundation, which will administer funds donated by you and us. A small donation of £1 per person will be taken when booking a holiday and that money will be put to good use by one of our carefully selected projects. If you don’t want to make the donation, just tell us when you book. To encourage you to do this and to put our money where our mouth is, we’ll match every single £1 donated and this we’ll give to our charity partner, Just a Drop. This is a global charity founded by members of the international travel industry, aiming to provide clean water and sanitation where it is most badly needed. In the developing world it costs just £1 to supply water to a child for nearly 10 years, so for every single person who travels with us, we’ll give Just a Drop £1.