Private Bird Watching Esquipulas Manuel Antonio

Do not take this tour unless you a professional bird watcher and are okay with doing things on your own. From the moment we got in the car, the tour guide, Edgar, asked us questions to see how much we knew about birdwatching to see how much he could get away with doing as little as possible. After I told him we were beginners and I wanted to see a toucan, he showed us a toucan and turned to his driver and told him in Spanish, "She saw a toucan, the rest of this tour is going to be easy." And that's exactly what is was for him. He took us on a "coffee break" for at least 45 minutes which consisted of him and some acquaintances sitting down for coffee. My partner and I do not drink coffee and we stood and watched the birds alone from the telescope while he kicked back, drank coffee, and walked around with his friends. We hired a guide so he could be with us and tell us about the birds. Later, we looked up some of the birds we found and they were a different name than what he told us . A little after, he decided he wanted breakfast so he took us to breakfast without asking if we even wanted that. They had already provided us with many fruits and a sandwich, we did not need another breakfast, but again it was one long break for him. The tour also ended exactly one hour early. The description does not say there is a breakfast or coffee stop. It also doesn't say 5 hours it says 6 hours and they dropped us off after 5 hours. So all in all we got about 2 and a half hours of bird watching after you take out the unnecessary stops and the fact we got dropped off early. The time that we did actually get to bird watch with him was uncomfortable as well. The tour guide kept reminding us how expensive his equipment was. He told us he would let us use HIS binoculars because we only had one pair, but he was watching them like a hawk, telling us to use the straps when we already were, grabbing them from us when we put them down on the table etc. There were many times he used them to spot birds for himself and take pictures and videos of the ones he liked. It was very much Edgar's terms and we were just the idiots that paid. After we told the tour company, Costa Rica Jade tours, how he acted, they acted just as terrible as him. They berated us for not being professional bird watchers and bringing our own equpment (we didnt know we had to), they made excuses for the unnecessary stops saying they didn't want us to starve and that it was impossible that we could have eaten breakfast before so early (we did eat fruit and Granola before we went because the tour description did not say we would be eating multiple times) and that the hour we got ripped off of was appropriate because they tour said "approximately 6 hours." I l am now fighting with viator to get my money back so we can actually go with a real tour company birdwatching and not this awful company. We cancelled all other tours we booked with them after this awful experience. We showed the locals at our Casita the birds that Edgar showed us (19 in total when many reviewers said they saw over 50) and they laughed and told us they could show us more birds in their backyard. Terrible they treated us this way. One star.