The toucan landed just a few beak lengths away from our plates of chicken stew and fried plantains. Both he, a colorful mélange of yellow, green and black, as well as the traditional lunch at the farmhouse on the banks of the Rio Sarapiqui, charmed us. Such surprises popped up often on our Austin-Lehman Adventures Costa Rican family trip.

While most of the group biked the challenging gravel and dirt roads ringing the Arenal Volcano, we asked for an option that would get us close to wildlife. Austin-Lehman delivered the Arenal Hanging Bridges eco-walk, a mild hike through the heart of a rainforest.

Crossing the fixed and suspended cable bridges, some as high as 150-feet, put us in the treetops, the better to see the troops of howler monkeys scampering branch to branch. The shady trails took us by ficus trees as thick as VW Beetles, past hanging vines, ferns, and philodendron plants as big as elephant ears. We saw a poisonous snake curled on a log, leaf-cutter ants march with military precision, carrying bits of broken green on their backs and we watched a beak-heavy toucan careen onto a tree branch. Afterwards, another surprise: a soothing soak at a lushly landscaped private hot springs whose bubbling, mineral rich waters cascaded into pools, perfect for massaging the cyclists’ aching muscles.

Our next destination, Tortuguero, a pastiche of canals originally used by loggers, but now part of a 51,000-acre national park reachable only by small boat or plane. At the edge of the refuge, Tortuga Lodge, our overnight base, rises mirage-like near the confluence of the San Juan River and the Caribbean. Daytime trips floated us past stands of bamboo, mango and spiny cedar trees. We spotted boat-billed egrets, tiger herons, and two-toed sloths. Our guide maneuvered us close enough to a Panama tree to reveal that the row of black bumps was really a line of long-nosed bats and that the gnarly, half-submerged log near the bank was actually a crocodile snout.

Tortuguero, “turtle catcher” in Spanish, gains fame as the site of the 14-mile dark sand beach where hundreds of Atlantic Green sea turtles lumber ashore from June through October to lay their eggs. On a windy night with a sliver of moon, we stood shoreside, listening to the pounding surf. When the guide first pointed out a turtle, since our eyes were not yet adjusted to the dark, we discerned only a dark shadow, but heard her labored breathe and the scratchy sound of her flippers as she pulled herself to a spot above high tide level. Satisfied with her site, she painstakingly whipped the sand out from under her with her back flippers, then dropped scores of eggs before methodically tossing the dirt back into the nest with her front flippers. Then she slowly lumbered down the beach, disappearing into the waves, and leaving us amazed.

Our final adventure was an 18-mile rafting trip on the swift-moving Pacuare River , designated one of the top ten whitewater runs in the world for its combination of easy access, cascading rapids and wilderness scenery. We paddled past tall ceiba trees, swirled by waterfalls and boulders, and in the calm of a canyon, floated on our backs, grateful for the wonders of Costa Rica.