Rather than write a separate review i thought i would share an email sent to the Travel local team that sums up my views: I just wanted to express how impressed I was with Ecole travel in Costa Rica and their representative Maria. I have just paid a deposit for a 19 night tour and she has been patient and knowledgeable throughout. To put this into context we normally use high operators such as Audley, Cox and Kings, Reef and Rainforest and Scott Dunn and have stayed in some of the most iconic and famous hotels in the world. But we now want to change it down a notch and go for simpler, off the beaten track and ecological locally owned properties. We are also monumentally antisocial towards other tourist and want an immersive and totally local feel to our trips. Maria just “got us” from the outset and didn’t try and up-sell at all and stuck 100% to our budget (bar a couple of quid). The advantage of liaising with someone who lives in county compared to someone who may have backpacked once or twice and completed a free “familiarisation visit” AKA ... "free holiday" ... is honestly like night and day. Very refreshing indeed. If the trip goes well then we will be back to Travel Local and ditch the high end operators who demand at least 2-3 times the cost. Thank you, the idea behind Travel Local is amazing, fingers crossed it surges this competitive market!