🇨🇷 2025 Summer La Fortuna

Next stop, La Fortuna. For the journey to La Fortuna, I also took the shared shuttle operated by Roots. It took around four hours, and I arrived in La Fortuna at 4 pm. My most important task on arrival was to buy contact lenses since I forgot the ones I brought at the hostel in San Jose. Some of the activities I planned in the following days would be better with contact lenses, so I had to buy the expensive monthly disposable contact lenses.

After I settled in, I went for dinner with a German girl I met on the way to Tortuguero. She is only 18 and decided to volunteer at a sloth sanctuary and backpack for a bit before going to university. During our chat, I sometimes started the sentence with "When I was younger..." and it was then that I realised that I am no longer a young person. I also found out that lots of Gen Z don't drink alcohol, but they are super into matcha and healthy diet – the German girl suggested that we grab a cup of matcha after dinner, instead of drinking at a pub! On our way back to the hotel, we browse through souvenirs at shops. I found a really ugly magnet and almost bought it because it looked so sad. After parting ways with the German girl, I thought about how I love travelling alone and meeting people on the way. Some people you might never see again, but some become lifelong friends.

The next morning, I was amazed by the birds around the hotel. I saw two woodpeckers, an ahummingbird and several vultures during breakfast. I joined a sloth and coffee tour from Jungle tours, which I thought was great and the tour guide was very professional. We saw around 8 to 10 sloths that day. There are many tour operators like this in La Fortuna, so you can pick the one you like – the highest rating or the cheapest.

Before the sloth walk, the guide gave me a brief introduction of two types of sloths in Costa Rica, the two-toed sloth and three-toed sloth, and how to distinguish them. He also told me some fun facts about sloths, for example, they only come to the ground when they need to defecate, and they only do that once a week. There are lots of other wildlife in the sloth park. We saw an armadillo, poisonous dart frogs, a sleepy owl and a tree frog. Before the end of the tour, the guide pointed at a tree root and told me to look closely. There was a highly venomous vapor curled up like a little ball. He said that is the most venomous snake in Costa Rica and then had to check its location everyday before the open to prevent tourists accidentally got too closed and go bitten.

The coffee and cholocate tour started after the sloth tour. The coffee guide asked us what kind of coffee we usually drink. The other two girls stayed silent, so I answered proudly, "black coffee!" He replied, "ok good, but I mean the type of coffee bean... So, what we usually have is Arabica coffee." Great, an awkward start. He kept his calm and explained the differences between Arabica and Robusta coffee, and the knowledge of the global coffee production. Most of the coffee planted in Costa Rica is Arabica coffee trees, which are shorter, bush-sized trees. He also introduced the coffee production process, from harvesting, processing, drying, to roasting. We also tried the traditional coffee grinder. It looked like a stone chair with a rock that looked like a rolling pin. To use it, you simply scatter coffee beans on top of the "chair" and use the "rolling pin" to grind the coffee. And of course we tried the coffee! The traditional Costa Rican way to brew coffee is quite similar to drip coffee; the differences are the material and the length of the filter.

Next stop, we entered the cocoa tree area to learn about chocolates. Our tour guide specialises in chocolate; he gave us different flavours of chocolate that he made beforehand to try. One of the flavours that amazed me the most is chocolate with goji.

Finally, we had a brief check on the sugarcane field. The tour guide said that because it was the rainy season, the sugarcane was not very sweet. He picked one that seemed ok and squeezed some sugarcane juice for us to try. It made me homesick. I remembered that when I was a kid, I always asked my parents to buy a bag of sugarcanes for me when we went to the south of Taiwan.

I took Uber to a coffee shop, Sloffee, for a nice cup of coffee. It is convenient to take Uber in La Fortuna and it is very affordable. However, Uber is still technically illegal in Costa Rica, so the driver will sometimes ask the customers to sit at the front. We did see some police officers on the way to Sloffee, but don't worry, I was in the front seat. Sloffee is a cafe on the side of the main road. I ordered a cup of drip coffee and a blueberry croissant and had a chill afternoon enjoying my book. (Highly recommend the cafe!)

In the evening, I booked a cooking experience to learn how to make rice and chicken, and empanadas. I was a bit worried at the start when the chef took out a bunch of coriander because I just can't stand the smell of it. Thank goodness I wasn't assigned to cut the coriander, or else, I think I would've died. But surprisingly, the dish didn't taste coriander-y at all. There were still hints of coriander, but it was acceptable level for me. We used an ingredient called hearts of palm take make the starter. I've never had it before. I thought it tasted like bamboo shoots. When we were busy cooking, the chef also fried some plantains for us to try. I really fell in love with plantain on this trip.

On my second day in La Fortuna, I joined a day tour to see the waterfall, volcano and hot spring. When we got to our first stop, the tour guide started speaking Spanish. I freaked out. and thought, "Did I accidentally sign up for the Spanish one?" But thankfully he translated what he said in English afterwards.

The first activity we did was a hike to the waterfall through a hanging bridge. If you like hanging bridges, there are other tours that go around eight to ten bridges. Since there's nowhere to change or put clothes near the waterfall, we had to change at the top near a platform and walk down. Thinking back, it was quite horrendous to walk down (not elegantly) with bikinis. My original thought was to take some beautiful photos for Instagram at the waterfall, but little did I know that the water was so deep. I am not a confident swimmer, so all of my photos look like I was seriously fighting for survival.

Before we got to the volcano, we stopped at an indigenous tribe, Maleku village. Here, we learned about how they preserve their traditional lifestyle and culture. "Kapi, kapi!" We said hello to the owner of the house and got their homebrewed alcohol. The visit to the village was quite short. We had the drink and also saw the traditional wooden masks and the meaning behind each drawings. For example, owls mean knowledge and wisdom, snake means health, sloth means longlife, and toucan means beauty.

The cloud started gathring when we were on our way to the volcano, but I thought it was fine to leave my raincoat in the car. The weather was nice at the start, but it started to rain five seconds after the tour guide said, "You guys are so lucky with the weather today, it is not raining." And ten seconds later it was chucking down. We still managed to finish the hike and saw the volcano from the viewpoint. Everyone was soaking wet when we got back in the car. It continued to rain the whole way to hot spring. To my surprise, it was very nice to be in the hot spring when it was raining heavily.

So my last night in La Fortuna ended in this horrendous heavy rain, but it is still the favourite town I visited in Costa Rica. If I come here again, I will definitely do a day trip to Rio Celeste to see the river in baby blue colour.

A side note, the housekeeper somehow changed the hot water setting in my shower. The water was so hot that I had to shower in cha-cha dance.