Costa Rica fits in a week. Choosing what to skip is the hard part.
Whether the Arenal hot springs are worth $60 after the waterfall. Which Monteverde bridges you can walk without a guide. What a night walk actually shows you. Reviews of every tour you can book in Costa Rica.
The waterfall, the bridges, the thermal pools, a boat, and the forest after dark.
Five bookings a first Costa Rican week is usually built around. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first afternoonSkip-the-Line La Fortuna Waterfall Admission TicketAround 500 steps down to the plunge pool below Arenal. Go late, when the morning minibuses have gone and the water is yours.
02The cloud forestSelvatura Park Hanging Bridge Tour in MonteverdeA walk out along suspension bridges at canopy height in Monteverde. Cloud moves through the trees while you are standing in it.
03The volcano dayArenal Volcano and Thermal Hot Springs from San JoseArenal from the road, then the thermal pools that the same volcano heats. A long day out of San Jose, and the one most people say they would repeat.
04The Pacific dayTortuga Island Full Day Tour from San José with LunchThe boat out to Tortuga Island from Puntarenas, with lunch on the sand. Leaves early, gets back late, worth the alarm.
05After darkMonteverde Night Tour with a Certified Tour Guide (6 PM or 8 PM)Two hours in the forest with a guide and a torch. Eyelash vipers, sleeping toucans, frogs the size of a thumbnail.
Walk to it, raft down it, rappel through it or float it. Pick your river.
More of Costa Rica is booked around falling water than around anything else. Four kinds of water day, what it costs to get on each one, and which base it works from.
Six towns, and the day out each one is built for.
Costa Rica is small and the roads are slow, so the trip is really a choice of bases. A volcano town, the capital you fly into, two surf beaches, the port for Manuel Antonio, and a village in the cloud.
La Fortuna: a volcano, a waterfall and hot water coming out of the ground.
Everything in La Fortuna →
Arenal stopped erupting in 2010 and the town kept everything else: the cone on the skyline, a waterfall in a gorge behind it, hanging bridges through the rainforest on its flank, and thermal rivers you can sit in after dark. Three days here is not too many.
Ticket only, or a guide with it
The admission ticket is the cheapest good hour in the country. A guide is worth it only if you are combining the falls with the Arenal trails on the same run.
Which thermal pools are worth it
The resort complexes stack pools down a hillside with a bar in the middle; the quiet ones are a single river fed straight off the volcano. Both are hot. Only one is loud.
Hanging bridges on the Arenal flank
Three kilometres of trail with the long bridges strung across ravines. Walk it alone and you see trees; walk it with a naturalist and you see the sloth that was there the whole time.
The days out more travellers take than anything else in Costa Rica.
Every tour in Costa Rica →The days people come home and tell their friends to book. What each one costs, and what earns it the slot.
1
Skip-the-Line La Fortuna Waterfall Admission Ticket
Visit La Fortuna Waterfall at your own pace with a prebooked admission ticket. Walk through the Río Fortuna Ecological Reserve, descend about 500 steps, and reach a 70-meter waterfall where swimming may be allowed in suitable weather. The reserve has rest areas, viewpoints, changing facilities, parking, and accessible areas near the entrance.
From · $20
Read our review →
2
Tortuga Island Full Day Tour from San José with Lunch
from $115
3
Selvatura Park Hanging Bridge Tour in Monteverde
from $56
4
Hanging Bridges Walk in Arenal Volcano
from $39
5
Hacienda Doka Coffee Experience Tour
from $35
6
Catamaran Ocean King Manuel Antonio
from $86
7
Extreme Zipline tour in Monteverde
from $72
8
San Jose By Night: Sights & Culture Tour with Local Dinner
from $80
Half a per cent of the planet, five per cent of its species.
Sloths in the almond trees, capuchins working the beach for lunch, eyelash vipers coiled at eye height after dark. You will see some of it from the road and almost all of it with somebody who knows where to look.
The coast Costa Rica plans its last three days around.
Warm water from Guanacaste down to the Osa, a swell that teaches beginners and keeps everyone else busy, and a horizon that turns orange at six all year. Boats leave from Puntarenas, Quepos and Jaco; the beaches do the rest.
Monteverde sits in the cloud, which is the entire point.
At 1,400 metres the forest is wet, cool and crowded with things that live nowhere else. Bridges take you to canopy height, ziplines take you across the valley, and the night tour is where the quetzals and vipers turn up. Bring a fleece; nobody packs one.
Every Monteverde day out →
What a day out in Costa Rica actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Costa Rica has a reputation for being dear, and the reputation is only half earned: plenty of the best days here cost less than dinner on the beach.
Park entries, the waterfall ticket, a night walk with a guide, chocolate at a working farm.
The standards: hanging bridges, ziplines, thermal pools, a rafting morning, the boat to Tortuga Island.
Long transfers built into the day, private naturalists, and the Osa and Tortuguero trips that need one.
Three things Costa Rica has that nowhere else does.
Rainforest and beaches exist all over the tropics. A river that turns blue where two clear streams meet, a village reached only by boat, and cacao pods opened in front of you do not.
Rio Celeste
Two clear rivers meet inside Tenorio Volcano National Park and the water below the junction turns opaque turquoise. It is a mineral reaction, not a dye and not a trick of the light, and it only holds for the stretch downstream of the meeting point. The trail in is muddy most of the year; the falls are a long staircase down from it.
- 1Rio Celeste Waterfall Plus Sloths and wildlife Sanctuary★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 110 reviews
- 2Sloth Discovery & Swim in Rio Celeste★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 80 reviews
- 3Tubing Adventure in the Río Celeste★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 78 reviews
Tortuguero
There is no road into Tortuguero. You arrive by boat along the canals or by small plane, which is why the village still feels like a place rather than a resort strip. Green turtles come ashore to nest on the black sand between July and October, and the walks that go out to watch them run at night, in small groups, with a licensed guide.
- 1Night Turtle Nesting Tour from Tamarindo★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 206 reviews
- 2Turtle Nesting Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 132 reviews
- 3Small-Group Tortuguero National Park Night Walk in Costa Rica★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 91 reviews
Coffee and cacao
The volcanic slopes above San Jose and Alajuela grow some of the best arabica in the Americas, and the farms that have opened to visitors take you through picking, drying and roasting in the order it actually happens. The cacao half is messier and better: pods split open in front of you, beans fermented, roasted and ground into something that tastes nothing like a bar.
- 1Poás Volcano and Coffee Tour with Tasting and La Paz Falls★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 137 reviews
- 2Chocolate Making and Tasting at a Local Factory in San José★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 115 reviews
- 3Chocolate and Coffee Tour Farm Don Jorge★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 113 reviews
Four Costa Rican bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be sorted from a hotel desk the night before. These four run on entry caps, boat timetables and a nesting season that takes no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Catamaran Ocean King Manuel AntonioThe park caps how many people go in each day and closes on Tuesdays. Turn up without a slot in high season and you are looking at the fence.
- 02Small-Group Tortuguero National Park Night Walk in Costa RicaNo road reaches Tortuguero. Every arrival is a boat or a small plane, both on fixed departures, and the village has few beds.
- 03Night Turtle Nesting Tour from TamarindoNesting is seasonal and the walks go out at night in small licensed groups. There is no turning up on spec.
- 04Poás Volcano and Coffee Tour with Tasting and La Paz FallsEntry to the crater runs on timed reservations with a daily cap, and the park shuts whenever the gas readings say so.
What to do in Costa Rica when the afternoon rain arrives.
From May to November the mornings are usually clear and the rain comes after lunch, hard and then done. The pattern is reliable enough to plan around: put the forest and the water in the morning, and keep something under a roof, or something already wet, for three o’clock.
San Jose, La Fortuna, Monteverde, Manuel Antonio: the ten days almost everybody does first.
San Jose
Monteverde
Manuel Antonio
Tamarindo
TortugueroBy town — where you sleep decides the day
By kind of day — canopy, water, wildlife or wheels
The newest Costa Rica tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Poas Volcano + Coffee tour + Waterfall tour day from San Jose
Read our review →
Rio Celeste Waterfall at Tenorio Volcano and Sloth Watching Tour From San Jose
Read our review →
Combo White Water Rafting and Tubing in La Fortuna
Read our review →
3 Hour ATV + Waterfalls, Private Beach & Panoramic Ocean Views
Read our review →
3 Hour ATV Secluded Beach Tour from Tamarindo, Flamingo, Conchal & Grande
Read our review →
Day Trip from San Jose to Irazu Volcano National Park, Cartago City and Orosi Valley
Read our review →
Sirena Station, Corcovado National Park Day Trip from Quepos.
Read our review →
