The Tropical Adventures Foundation started with a dual purpose of helping communities in Costa Rica, while at the same time opening the hearts and expanding the minds of the people who come to participate in our program. Another side benefit we've found is that participating in our programs seems to encourage a volunteer ethic in our clients.

When we originally started, all our volunteers wanted to come and participate for a couple of weeks or more in one particular project. Throughout the last couple of years we've been finding a trend -- especially with families traveling together on vacation -- whereby people want to combine a vacation with volunteering. This is known in the travel industry as voluntouring or voluntourism.

Volunteer vacations participants are diverse, but typically share a desire to “do something good” while also experiencing new places and challenges in locales they might not otherwise visit.

Tropical Adventures is now offering custom-designed voluntour packages. Though we do cater to individuals, our average clients are families. These families usually stay for 10 days to 2 weeks, spending an average of 40% of their time volunteering. The rest of their time touring Costa Rica enjoying the amazing natural beauty we have to offer here, as well as adventure tours such as zip-line (canopy) tours, kayaking, indigenous tours, volcano tours, river rafting, surfing and many off-the-beaten-path adventures.

Our own full-time travel agent listens to the needs, desires and financial limitations of the participant, family or group and then comes up with completely custom-tailored and specialized itinerary suggestions and pricing.

The Mudd Family from Indiana who visited recently commented:

"We are a family of four (two boys, 13 and 10) who have never volunteered outside of our community. We wanted to expose our family to a volunteering in another country while having an opportunity to explore the country as well. Tropical Adventures did an amazing job of understanding our situation and working with us to create that trip. Their patience in working with us to meet the needs of a family was exceptional. This trip opened the door for our family to begin to volunteer more. I highly recommend this type of trip and Tropical Adventures to families seeking adventure, family bonding, and the opportunity to teach your children the value of learning about other cultures."

This has been a great way for us as a non-profit foundation to continue supporting our local community projects as it brings in more people, more help, more exposure to what some of these community organization's needs are. And because most of the hotels, transportation options and tour operators give us a 20% commission, we're able to take that money and apply it directly to supporting our initiatives in the communities where we work.

Because all of us here at Tropical Adventures are Costa Rican citizens, we know the areas, providers and services well. We can make great suggestions and find ways to maximize our participants time here -- all while saving them money.

If you're considering a vacation to Costa Rica and want to see "behind the scenes" and have the adventure of your life -- please contact us for more information. We'd love to help!