Arenal With Kids: The Volcano, the Hot Springs and the Bridges in the Canopy

Arenal is the volcano in the middle of Costa Rica, a perfect cone over a lake, and the town of La Fortuna at its foot is where I put every family for their first three nights. We stayed at the base in 2008 and I have been sending families there since.

The hot springs are the thing. The volcano heats the rivers underground and a dozen resorts have built pools around them, from a natural river with rocks to sit on to a full water park of warm pools and slides. Tabacon is the famous one with the river. Baldi is the one with the slides. A day pass with dinner, or a hotel with its own springs so the kids can soak before bed every night.

The hanging bridges are a walk through the rainforest canopy on a series of suspension bridges, some a hundred meters long, with the volcano appearing through the trees. Two hours, flat enough for small kids, and a guide with a scope finds sloths, toucans and the eyelash viper on a leaf.

The rest of the days

A night walk with a guide for the red eyed tree frogs, which come out after dark, and the kinkajous. The La Fortuna waterfall, five hundred steps down to a pool you can swim in. A chocolate tour where the kids grind the beans. Ziplines through the canopy for anyone over eight, and a lake kayak for everyone else.

Sloths are guaranteed at the sloth sanctuary on the edge of town, and usually in the trees outside the hotel. The Arenal 1968 trail walks the lava field from the eruption that year.

Three nights. Then the road to Monteverde over the lake, or straight to the coast at Manuel Antonio, and the sloths are there too.

Planning Costa Rica with kids? Start with the full Costa Rica family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.