What is Puerto Limon REALLY like?

[path145]

I'll be traveling to Puerto Limon on Carnival Miracle next February. I've read some differing opinions about that port, anything from it's dirty and not safe to it's beautiful and the people are friendly. In about 5 mos I'll be making my own decision.

 

I was wondering... is it the people who stayed near the port who had a bad opinion? Did getting away from the port make the difference in finding the beauty and friendliness?

 

I'm not sure what we're planning to do there yet. I'm thinking sloths and/or coffee; my boyfriend is thinking zip line. But depending on what everyone says, we might spend some of our time just looking around.

[cruzeluver]

We took a tour that went quite far away from the port area. But then we explored the area around the port when we got back. Puerto Limon ranks as one of my favorite places we have been. Absolutely loved it. We found the people to be warm and very friendly. Does it look like some Disneyized version of a Caribbean port? No. Its a real place with real people going about their lives. And we loved every minute of it.

[grandmato4]

Costa Rica is lush and green and beautiful in our opinion. We loved it. Purerto Limon is a city. There is not a touristy area outside the pier gate but purely the city. In traveling through the city to the countryside it is not unusual to see garbage dumped beside the road. the roads need repair and tend to have many pot holes and are narrrow. The area near the port is not where the rich live but where the normal everyday people live. We enjoyed speaking to each of people we met that lived in the city and in the countryside. The beach that we visited the ocean area that we drove by are black sand beaches and rocky and do not have the white fine sand beauty of many caribbean islands.

 

The countryside is a lush green with beautiful flora. You will not likely see the beauty simply by staying in the city near the pier. It would be a very selective personal thing as to if you would enjoy wandering around that area by yourselves. Many cruisers are simply not comfortable in a foreign country city in the type of area surrounding the pier.

 

Being your first visit I would strongly suggest planning that tour to get outside the city. Your travels to your destination will allow you to decide if the area outside the peir would be something you would be comfortable wandering around or not. Not sure how long your day is but if you have enough time and could then do this if you wished upon returning after your tour that could work OR at least you will know what you would like to do if you should be lucky enough to stop there again on another cruise.:)

[tjmaher]

What tour did you take and who was your tour company?

Thanks for any information you can supply. Also, do you recall the name of the beach you visisted?

[Snorkel2Much]

What tour did you take and who was your tour company?

Thanks for any information you can supply. Also, do you recall the name of the beach you visisted?

I'm not the person you're asking, but you may find useful info here:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1043787

We did ziplining plus a whole lot more, but our guide offered plenty of other options if that's not your thing. Danilo and Shanny made a great team. We visited Playa Bonita beach, with copper colored (not black) sand, which was very close to the port.

[grandmato4]

What tour did you take and who was your tour company?

Thanks for any information you can supply. Also, do you recall the name of the beach you visisted?

 

 

We did our tour with J.J. last Feb. I had seen his name mentioned here on cc by a couple people so I contacted him via e-mail months before our cruise telling him we wanted to see his country, visit a local beach for lunch, and purchase some coffee. He wrote back with an itineary taking us to a banana plantation where we learned more than I imagined possible about bananas, took a ride on the Tortuga canal where we saw many differents birds, a Jesus Lizard, many sloths and other animals. Stopped at a local fruit stand and sampled fruit and chocolate beans. Viewed different areas of Limon. Unfortuantely I can't remember the name of the beach or the restaurant we visited. I wouldn't call it a beautiful beach and not a beach I would have wished to spend a great many hours, but we did enjoy as it as it was something different from the normal caribbean beaches. The port of Limon is simply not a place I would plan to have a beach day even if I would visit one for a short time. We enjoyed the views along the way traveling to and from our different stops. Our last stop was at a local grocery store where we purchased several different brands of coffee, vanilla, and local beer to bring back to our SIL as we brough him back one bottle of local beer from each of our ports. After mentioning to our cruise critic roll call that we were doing this tour which we originally planned to do with just the two of us several asked about it so I wrote to J.J. and we ended up inviting others on our rollcall to join us. We had a long port day in Costa Rica which was great because while J.J. had said that our tour should take about 4-1/2 to 5 hours but we had the ability to spend as little or long as we wished at each stop and were able to stop when ever we or J.J. saw something we wanted to look at or he wanted to show us. Some on the tour wished to go back to the ship before we'd finished the entire tour so we dropped them off and continued touring. We spend a little over 6 hours on our tour and still had time to wander around the vendor area at the pier and returned to the ship an hour before we had to be back on board.

 

Hope what ever you decide to do that you enjoy Costa Rica as much as we did.

[Mommy4lyfe]

We did our tour with J.J. last Feb. I had seen his name mentioned here on cc by a couple people so I contacted him via e-mail months before our cruise telling him we wanted to see his country, visit a local beach for lunch, and purchase some coffee. He wrote back with an itineary taking us to a banana plantation where we learned more than I imagined possible about bananas, took a ride on the Tortuga canal where we saw many differents birds, a Jesus Lizard, many sloths and other animals. Stopped at a local fruit stand and sampled fruit and chocolate beans. Viewed different areas of Limon. Unfortuantely I can't remember the name of the beach or the restaurant we visited. I wouldn't call it a beautiful beach and not a beach I would have wished to spend a great many hours, but we did enjoy as it as it was something different from the normal caribbean beaches. The port of Limon is simply not a place I would plan to have a beach day even if I would visit one for a short time. We enjoyed the views along the way traveling to and from our different stops. Our last stop was at a local grocery store where we purchased several different brands of coffee, vanilla, and local beer to bring back to our SIL as we brough him back one bottle of local beer from each of our ports. After mentioning to our cruise critic roll call that we were doing this tour which we originally planned to do with just the two of us several asked about it so I wrote to J.J. and we ended up inviting others on our rollcall to join us. We had a long port day in Costa Rica which was great because while J.J. had said that our tour should take about 4-1/2 to 5 hours but we had the ability to spend as little or long as we wished at each stop and were able to stop when ever we or J.J. saw something we wanted to look at or he wanted to show us. Some on the tour wished to go back to the ship before we'd finished the entire tour so we dropped them off and continued touring. We spend a little over 6 hours on our tour and still had time to wander around the vendor area at the pier and returned to the ship an hour before we had to be back on board.

 

Hope what ever you decide to do that you enjoy Costa Rica as much as we did.

 

 

Thank you for sharing your experience. We will be in Puerto Limon on 12/30. Can you give me the contact info JJ tours.

 

Thanks

Gladys

[grandmato4]

Thank you for sharing your experience. We will be in Puerto Limon on 12/30. Can you give me the contact info JJ tours.

 

Thanks

Gladys

 

j.j.'s email address was joiner72@hotmail.com . I enjoyed e-mailing him many times as we 'd booked our tour about 6 months before our cruise(I'm an early planner;)) and then a couple months later changed it to include others from our rollcall. We really enjoyed our day with him. At the time we booked and did our tour with him he was doing all of his own tours but had a lovely girl with him our tour day that he was training to be able to handle more tours on the same day. Let me know if you have any other questions. Enjoy your cruise:)

[RTanner]

I'll be traveling to Puerto Limon on Carnival Miracle next February. I've read some differing opinions about that port, anything from it's dirty and not safe to it's beautiful and the people are friendly. In about 5 mos I'll be making my own decision.

 

I was wondering... is it the people who stayed near the port who had a bad opinion? Did getting away from the port make the difference in finding the beauty and friendliness?

 

I'm not sure what we're planning to do there yet. I'm thinking sloths and/or coffee; my boyfriend is thinking zip line. But depending on what everyone says, we might spend some of our time just looking around.

We were in Puerto Limon on April and enjoyed our visit. We took the Jungle Canopy Tour in the rain forest which was an all day affair. Our guide was very proud of his country and extremely knowledgeable. When we returned we looked around the town itself but there isn't much of note there.

Puerto Limon isn't a big tourist town as you find on the Pacific Coast. The port is a working container port and the town itself is basically a blue collar town. The main industry seems to be the transshipment of fruit, primarily bananas. This will probably change as tourism becomes bigger and bigger there, but for now it's a good look at what Costa Rica is really like.

As I stated, we really enjoyed the visit and have no qualms about returning.