ATEC — the Talamancan Association of Ecotourism and Conservation — is a non-profit that has been arranging guides in this corner of Costa Rica for over twenty-five years, and it represents something like a hundred guides across sixteen communities on the south Caribbean.
It is the right first stop here. The Yorkín river trip, the Kékoldi hawk watch, the Bribri cacao farms, night walks, surf lessons and cooking classes are all booked through it, and the money goes to the communities running them rather than to an agency in San José.