Our day started with a delicious breakfast included with our hotel stay at Arenal Manoa. We’ve been loving the classic Costa Rican breakfast…rice and beans with chorizo and plantains!
When planning for this trip, we found a lot of different tours offered in major destinations…from zip lining and hanging bridges to scuba diving and fishing. The Arenal area has really dense forested regions, so we decided to do a hanging bridges tour here, and opted for Mistico Hanging Bridges. You can do either a self-guided (~$25pp) or guided tour (usually an additional ~$50). If you follow us, we rarely do guided tours because we feel like the self-exploration is half the adventure.
However, with the density of the rainforest, we can recommend a guided tour, as guides have a certain skillset…and powerful monoculars. These guided tours will give you more opportunities to wildlife and learn about the local flora and fauna. Luckily, we’re amateur wildlife spotters at this point and were even able to spot a lot of different things around us (even helping some of the guides locate toucans at one point). Along the trail, you’ll also find a waterfall!
At Mistico, there are 20 bridges total with 6 of them being full suspension (hanging) bridges. The suspension bridges definitely took some getting used to…but after a few you get your hanging bridge legs all situated! It’s incredible to be suspended hundreds of feet above the rainforest floor, but if you’re afraid of heights…maybe don’t look down.
After walking through the jungle, we decided to make our way back into town to check out the famous La Fortuna waterfall and cool off in the water. The waterfall is not too far from the town itself, so even if you don’t have a car, it’s a quick taxi ride. For this, you definitely don’t need a guide. It’s a private park with entrance fee of about $18USD and the “hike” to the falls is short…We say “hike” because it really consists of about 500 stairs. It took us about 15 minutes to get down to the waterfalls, and about 20 minutes (with rest) to climb back up…pace yourself and channel the motivational placards on the way up (“You’re only 400 steps from the top!”).
What’s nice about this waterfall (catarata en español), is that you can jump into the water and cool off. If you’re adventurous, you can get pretty close to the falls itself, but there is also a nice area downstream with calm waters to relax.
At the entrance of the private park is a little butterfly trail with beautiful flowing plants and we saw some really unique butterflies that we’ve never seen before!
Once we got to the parking lot, Joey spotted some toucans in the tree, so of course we had to stay a while to do a little bird watching and snap some photos!
After a pretty adventurous morning and afternoon, we decided to stop for lunch at Spectacolar Cantina for some delicious tacos.
After filling ourselves with birria and pollo tacos, we decided to make our way back to the hotel to relax…those 500 stairs really got us! We had a really nice dinner at our hotel’s restaurant and turned in early so we could enjoy a whole day at the famous Tabacon Hot Springs Resort tomorrow…stay tuned!