La Fortuna & Arenal

La Fortuna is a small town with a large volcano at the end of its main street: Arenal, 1,657 metres, the most perfect cone in Central America, which woke in 1968 after centuries of silence, buried a village, and then glowed and rumbled for forty-two years while the town below turned its heat into hot springs and its slopes into a national park. It has been quiet since 2010; the springs are not. Around it lie the largest lake in the country, hanging bridges through the rainforest, a seventy-metre waterfall in a canyon, and the sloths that made 'pura vida' a national policy.

The traveller rises early, because the cone shows itself before the clouds gather, and drives the loop road for the view; walks the hanging bridges of the cloud forest with binoculars for toucans and sloths; descends the five hundred steps to the Fortuna waterfall and swims in its pool; climbs, if the knees allow, the Cerro Chato trail to the crater lake; and ends every day in hot water — at Tabacón's river of springs, at Baldi's pools, or in the free thermal river beside the road, where the locals soak with a beer as the rain begins.

The Guide's practical counsel: the volcano is a shy sitter — book at least two nights so that one clear morning is likely —; the springs are priced from free to lavish, and the free river is a real experience, not a consolation; the green season is greener, cheaper and wetter, with rain that arrives punctually after lunch; the road around the lake to Monteverde is slow and beautiful, and the boat-and-van shortcut across the lake is the smart way; and everything wants sunscreen, then a raincoat, then a towel, in that order.