I want to live in Costa Rica, I love it that much. While we only spent time in Manuel Antonio/Quepos area and in La Fortuna but I was smitten.
Something about monkeys and sloths hiding in the trees and the insane (at least compared to where I’m from) butterflies everywhere.
I just loved how happy all the plants seemed, with the daily afternoon
rains.
We drove to La Fortuna in a rental car from Quepos, and let me tell you what an adventure that was! Renting a car in Costa Rica is a must if you want to explore more than one area, most destinations are several hours away from each other.
Back to the drive, Google maps took us on an insane driving route up the side of mountains and on roads where barely one car could fit, with cliffs that dropped off into the jungle and no road guards. I don’t recommend using google maps in Costa Rica, a better option is the app WAZE. This will actually lead you to La Fortuna on a normal highway, definitely less scenic but also much less stressful to drive.
We arrived in La Fortuna after a few stressful hours to check into our resort. We had decided after much research to stay at
Baldi Hot Springs
Which comes recommended as one of the top hot springs to visit in La Fortuna. So we decided just to stay at the resort. We had a double room for us and a double
room farther into the property for our daughters to stay. They loved the independence of staying in a different building from us ( My daughter was 18 at the time and my step daughter was 10ish)
Let me tell you this resort is wild, it has hot springs running through it like rivers with over 15 pools of varying temps, waterfalls to sit under, even cold pools to plunge into when you get too hot in the hot springs.
There are swim up bars all over and several restaurants to pick from. We spent a whole day here just swimming and going down the waterslides into the warm spring water.
Over in the kids pool area there is a big slide that takes you down into a bowl where you spin around the edges until you get spit out a hole at the bottom of the bowl. It is wildly fun!
For dinner we decided to stay at the resort and eat, which was fine, nothing special. In Costa Rica they are really big on rice and beans, so expect that at just about every meal.
Butterfly Conservatory
The next day we decided to drive to a butterfly sanctuary near La Fortuna
https://butterflyconservatory.org/ Which was super cool. They have multiple areas to enter in and interact with butterflies and colorful moths. Costa Rica is home to over 1200 species of butterflies and something like 12,000 species of moths.
The diversity in this country is truly amazing.
The butterfly conservatory also has a frog “house” where you can look at some of the most poisonous frogs in the world. They are tiny little guys and very colorful. There is one called the blue jeans poison dart frog that looks like it’s wearing a pair of blue jeans.
The walk takes you through gardens as well and a path leads around the property past a turtle pond and to a gazebo where you can take some selfies or in our case family pictures.
For dinner we headed into town, and tried a little taco place. The street corn was heaven for the girls and they ate it up!
Cacao Farm
To finish off our visit to La Fortuna we went to a cacao farm, where they grow cacao and make chocolate. We decided to take the night time tour, that included a whole host of nocturnal frogs and bugs including some rather large spiders.
The tour walks you around the property in the dark and walks you through the process of harvesting the cacao and how it is ground up, etc. You get to try some samples which the kids loved and at the end of course you are plopped into the gift shop, where we went home with some chocolate tea and other
products. We only had a few days in La Fortuna, and I had a whole list of things we didn’t get to do. I had wanted to hike to the waterfall, but didn’t wind up having time to do it. Next time for sure, we will be back.
Thanks for stopping by
-Beck
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