La Fortuna - waterfall & hanging bridges

Upon departing Tortuguero National Park we picked up a hire car and headed on to La Fortuna which is in the shadow of Arenal Volcano (more on that later). Costa Rica is regarded as a good place to self drive so we thought we’d give it a go, it’s nice to have a little more independence and go at our own pace. However having seen some of the driving standards in Central America so far there was some trepidation! The drive to La Fortuna was fairly straight forward and the roads not too bad on the whole, only the torrential rain slowed us down. Speed limits were very changeable and sometimes not very well signed, but with a co-pilot in place we coped! We stayed on the outskirts of La Fortuna in a lovely hotel complex with the all important pool (and several hot tubs to choose from)!

La Fortuna has a spectacular 70m tall waterfall on the outskirts of town that is popular with tourists. You’re able to swim in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, so on our first day we headed out to check it out. 530 odd steps later we reached the bottom of the waterfall, it was worth the walk albeit the walk back up was going to be interesting. We all had a dip in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, however the currents were dangerously strong (making us wonder how many incidents they have annually as there were many weak swimmers taking a dip). We moved on to one of the lower pools where the current was more gently and the view of the waterfall just as pleasing. We all enjoyed cooling off in the clear waters and building up energy for the walk back up. The walk back up wasn’t too bad, Elana was distracted with counting steps and Bert rode on Marks shoulders directing the way!

In the afternoon we headed out to ‘Mistico Arenal Hanging Bridges’. Set within one of the many nature reserves we headed out on a walk through the forest which has bridges spanning valleys taking us into the canopy of the trees below, 6 of the bridges we crossed were suspension bridges which was enjoyable for everyone apart from Helen who hates moving structures! Whilst we were on our walk the weather really closed in and we got soaked through, this limited the animals we were able to see but we enjoyed the variety of flora and the ambience.Read more