Hacienda El Viejo Wetlands: Wildlife Watching and Costa Rican Culture in Guanacaste

With five activities to choose from inside their own private wildlife refuge and private reserve to experience nature, culture, food and wildlife, Hacienda El Viejo Wetlands is a fantastic place for all ages to experience the best of the Guanacaste province.

If you’re staying in any of the Guanacaste beach towns, such as Tamarindo, Flamingo, Playas del Coco or any of the Papagayo Peninsula resorts, then this day trip to Hacienda El Viejo Wetlands HAS to be on your list!

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Hacienda El Viejo Wetlands

Hacienda El Viejo Wetlands is a private farm, refuge and reserve bordering the Palo Verde National Park.

They offer five different activities: wildlife watching boat tour, cultural tour, beer experience, rum factory tour and birdwatching in wetlands.

Visitors can choose to do any combination of the five activities with the option to add lunch.

The most popular tours are the Boat + Cultural + Lunch and the Boat + Birding + Lunch. They also have a Full day combo which includes four activities of your choosing plus lunch.

Book your Hacienda El Viejo tour with our discount in the link!

El Viejo Cultural Tour

This 1 hour cultural tour focuses on presenting traditional Guanacaste farm life.

Visitors will learn about the pillars of Guanacaste daily life: cowboys, farming, sugar cane pressing, tortilla making, local snacks and coffee, a preserved typical old-school Guanacaste home and a traditional outdoor kitchen.

The tour is very hands on, so you get to experience Guanacasteco life first hand, including pressing sugar cane through the typical trapiche, feeding Carmelito the ox, pressing tortillas by hand, donning a traditional Costa Rican dress and dancing.

The Hacienda El Viejo cultural tour is a fun tour for all ages, including kids. They’ll have a great time learning how to press their own tortillas and feeding the ox.

Hacienda El Viejo Wildlife Boat Tour

Their 5000 acres (2023 hectares) reserve protects part of the Tempisque River and one of the most important and endangered ecosystems in the world: the tropical dry forest.

It’s home to the one of the largest numbers of migratory birds in Central America as well as iguanas, crocodiles, bats, monkeys and many more animals.

During this 1-1.5 hour boat tour, you’ll cruise slowly down the Tempisque River, with your bilingual guide pointing different animals along the way.

One major highlight is that since it’s an exclusive reserve, Hacienda El Viejo only runs a maximum of 5-6 boats total during the day.

Here are some photos we took of animals we saw on the Hacienda El Viejo boat tour.

*It is important to note that since this is tropical dry forest – there are no sloths here. You must go to tropical rain forest to see sloths.*

Want to see sloths? Check out this Guanacaste rainforest sloth tour as a day trip from the beach instead!

El Viejo Vs Palo Verde National Park Boat Tour

If you’re wondering if you should do a boat tour in Palo Verde National Park or Hacienda El Viejo, here are some things to know about both.

• Palo Verde National Park itself doesn’t offer boat tours. You need to book with a tour guide or tour operator who can arrange the boat ride. If you just show up to the river on your own, you may find some locals offering to rent a boat but they are not guides nor do they speak much English.
• At Hacienda El Viejo, they have their own boats and bilingual guides.
• It is the same river. Both boat tours go down the Tempisque River.
• Both offer great opportunities to see wildlife. Hacienda El Viejo reserve protects 5000 acres and Palo Verde National Park protects 45,000 acres!
• Less boats at Hacienda El Viejo. Because many tour companies go to Palo Verde, it can get crowded during the high tourism season (Mid December through March). Hacienda El Viejo has a maximum of 5-6 boats at a time.

Our Recommendations

We have done both the Palo Verde National Park and Hacienda El Viejo boat tour multiple times. Both are fantastic!

However, I personally recommend Hacienda El Viejo if you want to do more. You can add on a cultural tour, birdwatching, a rum experience or beer tour at Hacienda El Viejo. All awesome tours that are worth adding if you are interested.

The lunch in the National Heritage site (the casona) is also very cool.

If you are more of a birder or photographer, we definitely recommend Hacienda El Viejo Wetlands and book the boat and birdwatching in wetland tour.

The birdwatching in the wetlands is incredible as you have the opportunity to see very sought after, highly prized birds.

But if you just want to do the boat tour, Palo Verde is a wonderful option. You can book the Palo Verde River boat tour (with or without transportation) here.

Hacienda El Viejo Rum Tour

Sugar cane is an extremely important crop of Guanacaste and Hacienda El Viejo has one of the largest sugar cane plantations in Cosat Rica. They produce their own rum from their organic sugar cane.

On the rum tour, you’ll learn all about this important crop and see the process from sugarcane to shot glass.

Like the cultural tour, they showed us a sugar cane mill (a modern electric one) to extract the delicious juice. Then we went through the distilling process which led us to their rum storage.

We got to smell the various aged rums in the oak barrels which was fascinating. The 1 hour tour ended with a delicious cocktail.

If you are also interested in beer, they offer a beer experience.

Beer Experience

Their beer experience takes place in a large indoor, air conditioned space where visitors will receive a short presentation about beer, and then a sampling of Hacienda El Viejo’s house beer.

Their beer is made with water from the Nicoya Peninsula, one of the Blue Zones in the world (communities that experience longevity).

Birding in Wetlands

For birders and wildlife photographers, you cannot miss Hacienda El Viejo’s birding in wetlands experience.

Inside their private wildlife refuge, they have wetlands as far as the eye can see, home to many shorebirds and migratory birds.

Here, visitors can enjoy the wetlands at their pace, whether they want to walk the trail, drive or simply take photos.

One of the most prized birds to see in Costa Rica that lives in Hacienda El Viejo’s reserve is the jabiru, the largest bird in Costa Rica. This huge stork is found from Mexico to Argentina, but there are only about 80 left in Costa Rica.

If you are a birder who wants to see a specific bird, just let the guide know and they will do their best to find it!

Lunch and Casona

Our visit to Hacienda El Viejo included a traditional Costa Rican lunch at their casona, or traditional house owned by ex-Costa Rican and Nicaraguan presidents.

The house is like a little museum, with photos of the local families and property from when they first built it. You can feel the history with every step as you wander through the casona!

Lunch was a delicious traditional Costa Rican casado of rice, beans, protein, salad, coffee, juice and dessert.

Overall, we had a wonderful time at Hacienda El Viejo and couldn’t have asked for a better way to experience Guanacaste culture, nature, wildlife and people.

For anyone who wants to experience Costa Rican culture, specifically Guanacaste culture, this is the best place for it!

Book your Hacienda El Viejo tour with our discount here!

Video

Here’s a video we made of our time at Hacienda El Viejo, to see what it’s like.

Get our Hacienda El Viejo discount to save some $$ off your tour!

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