La Fortuna is a lush rainforest nestled at the base of Arenal Volcano. It’s an adventure lovers paradise but can also be enjoyed if you prefer a slower pace with soaks in luxurious hot springs.

Itinerary Overview

For this itinerary traveling to Costa Rica with kids, you can either fly into San Jose Airport or Liberia Airport, we flew into San Jose on Southwest Airlines and stayed near the airport the first night. You can get around Costa Rica with private transfers or public transit but it’s much cheaper and easier to rent a car. We rented a small SUV with AVIS and had a good experience.

We spent four days in La Fortuna but could have easily spent more time enjoying the area.

Day 1: Drive to La Fortuna + Guided Sloth Tour

The drive from San Jose to La Fortuna can take around three hours depending on traffic. We enjoyed breakfast at our hotel then made our way to La Fortuna by lunch time.

We ate at the Open Kitchen and really enjoyed our food.

After lunch we took a Guided Sloth Tour at private reserve, it was important to us that we got to see sloths in the wild on this trip!

We enjoyed the walk, got to see tons of wildlife and experience making cane juice and tortillas. We were able to see two and three toed sloths, and our guide pointed out many animals that we would have never seen!

After our tour we checked into our hotel, ate dinner and checked out the pool.

Day 2: Mistico Hanging Bridges + La Fortuna Waterfall

For our second day we started with an early guided tour of Mistico Park’s hanging bridges so we could get a bird’s eye view of the rainforest.

The day was rainy and grey but that just added to the experience of hiking through the rainforest. We did enjoy having a guide but you can also select a self guided hike and go at your own pace.

After our two hour tour of the rainforest we changed into dry clothes and went to Soda & Restaurante Rodríguez We had the best traditional Costa Rican food here and loved the tree house feel.

After lunch we went to visit the La Fortuna Waterfall we purchased entrance tickets ahead of time and were excited to hike down and swim at the waterfall. Swimming is allowed as long as the conditions are safe. Sadly for us we were informed when we arrived that swimming was not allowed because there had been a lot of rain the previous night and morning. The falls were very strong so we could see why swimming would be restricted.

It was still worth hiking down the 530 steps to get to the bottom to visit the falls. I guess we will just have to return to get the experience of swimming at the base of the falls. We also got to see a bunch of orchids blooming along the path.

After climbing back up the kids were rewarded with ice cream while the parents got iced coffee.

After our day of hiking we decided to go soak in El Choyin, the free access to hot springs just outside of La Fortuna. You can simply park on the side of the road (we did pay $10 USD for a local to help us park and watch our rental car) and walk down to the river where the springs run. It was fun to soak in the river and play in the pools.

Be sure to wear sandals or water shoes because the rocks are slippery. We felt plenty safe at this location but we did keep our possessions with us in a dry bag.

Day 3: Hike Mirador el Silencio + Play at Termalitas Hot Springs

There are a few places to hike and see Arenal Volcano up close, we chose, Mirador el Silencio, a Private nature reserve right outside of Arenal National Park. The incredible views of Arenal Volcano, lovely trails through dense rainforests, and lots of wildlife sold us on this location. We opted to do Mirador el Silencio over the Arenal Volcano View and Lava trails because it was less busy, and the entrance fee was cheaper. There were also lava field trails so we didn’t feel like we missed out on anything at the other locations. We were lucky that the clouds cleared to give us an incredible view of the volcano as well as sightings of monkeys and sloths.

We did this hike without a guide and while we might have seen more wildlife with a guide we enjoyed going at our own pace for this hike.

After lunch we visited the hot springs Relax Termalitas. This hot springs is a locals favorite with lots of fun amenities for the kids including slides, hot and cool pools, waterfalls and plenty of shallow pools for littles.

I don’t have many pictures from our time there since I left my phone at the hotel (whoops). This choice was less fancy than other hot springs in the area but it was perfect for us with kids and easier on our budget.

Day 4: Enjoy your Hotel + Pack Up For Next Location

We were so sad that our time in La Fortuna was over and that we had to leave our little casita but also excited to get on to our next destination (Monteverde to visit the Cloud Forest). We enjoyed one last morning then hit the road.

What We *Would* Have Done

If we had more time in this region we would have visited:

• Rio Celeste Waterfall. This waterfall is known for its amazing turquoise blue color, it’s a little out of town but looks incredible.
• Gone on a Zipline tour, we planned this for later in our trip but would have loved to zip through the canopy of the rainforest in La Fortuna
• Try out some White Water Rafting
• Relax at one of the fancier hot springs. Tabacon hot springs and Baldi hot springs look very nice, we just aren’t in the relax and chill season of life yet.
• Gone on a chocolate + Coffee tour, we saved this experience for our time in Monteverde.

I hope you found this guide to La Fortuna helpful but most of all I hope you love your time in Costa Rica as much as we did!

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