The Arrival
I rolled into La Fortuna on a chicken bus at dusk—the kind where your knees are pressed against a crate of mangoes and the driver treats speed bumps like personal insults. The town was smaller than I'd expected: one main drag, a few sodas, the sort of place where everyone knows everyone's business before they've even checked into a hostel.
The Arenal Volcano loomed in the distance, shrouded in cloud like it was shy. I dumped my pack at a hostel run by an elderly Costa Rican bloke named Carlos who immediately informed me I looked "desperate for adventure," which wasn't exactly a compliment. He was right, though. I'd just quit a gig copywriting for a hotel chain in Santiago, and I had exactly three weeks to remember why I'd become a travel writer in the first place.
"You need to do the combo," Carlos said, pouring me a coffee without asking. "All three in one day. Trust me."
The Combo That Changed Everything
The next morning, I found myself on the Combo 3 Best Tours In La Fortuna Combo 3 Best Tours In La Fortuna, which Carlos had somehow booked for me overnight. The deal: Arenal volcano views, rainforest trekking, and a natural hot spring soak in nine hours. I was skeptical. Nine-hour combo tours usually mean you're herded around like cattle with a laminated map in one hand and a bottle of overpriced water in the other.
But our guide, Miguel, was having none of it. He actually knew things—not just facts, but stories. He could tell you which bird was calling without looking, why the forest smells different after rain, how the Arenal had last erupted in 1968 and buried entire towns. We spent the morning picking our way through rainforest trails, my thighs burning in ways I'd forgotten were possible, stopping to watch howler monkeys doing their best impression of dying dinosaurs.
Then came the hot springs. I'd expected something touristy, chlorinated, full of European retirees in matching resort bathrobes. Instead, we soaked in a natural pool fed by volcanic water, surrounded by jungle so thick you couldn't hear anything but the stream and your own thoughts. Miguel disappeared, leaving us in blessed silence. I floated there for probably twenty minutes, feeling like I'd somehow slipped backward through time.
The River of Impossible Blues
That evening, unable to sit still, I asked Carlos about the Río Celeste. He laughed—actually laughed—and said everyone asks about it but nobody expects it to be real.
"The colour," he said, "is not Instagram. Is science."
The next morning I was tubing down the river on Tubing in Rio Celeste Tubing in Rio Celeste, and Carlos was right: the turquoise wasn't filtered or fake. It was caused by volcanic minerals in the water—real, visible, somehow more shocking because of it. I'd expected a gentle float. What I got was a proper little adventure: the tube bouncing over rocks, me losing a flip-flop (surprise, surprise) within the first ten minutes, our guide grinning like this happened constantly.
There's something about being on a tube in the middle of a jungle, moving fast enough that you have to hold on, surrounded by that impossible colour, that strips away all the cynicism you've accumulated from years of travel writing. For about an hour, I wasn't performing the role of "travel writer seeking authentic experience." I was just someone getting properly wet in a ridiculous way.
Night Moves
That same evening—because I'm apparently constitutionally incapable of rest—I booked the Tour and Night Walk La Fortuna Tour and Night Walk La Fortuna. The night walk is not a gentle meander. It's a proper jungle stalk with a small group, torches trained on whatever nocturnal nonsense is happening in the darkness.
Our guide, a quiet bloke named Andrés, knew exactly where to look. We found frogs that looked like they'd been painted by someone on a very good trip—electric blues, neon reds, patterns that served no logical purpose except to announce their toxicity. We spotted a caiman lounging in the lagoon like it owned the place, probably because it did. We nearly stepped on a fer-de-lance, which Andrés caught with the casual attitude of someone who'd done this about a thousand times.
The thing about night walks is that your other senses go haywire. You can't really see, so you listen harder. You smell the humidity and the rot and the growth. You hear things you don't have names for. There's a vulnerability to it that daylight travel doesn't offer.
I found myself asking stupid questions—"Do jaguars come out at night?" "How do you know where you're going?" "Is that a snake or am I hallucinating?" Andrés answered each one with patience, never once making me feel like an idiot for asking.
The Kitchen Lesson
On my last full day, I broke my own rule and stayed put. Carlos had mentioned a cooking experience, something with a local woman named Doña Chela. I'd been resistant—cooking classes feel like the refuge of travellers who've run out of actual adventures—but I was out of activities and my flight was the next morning.
Costa Rica The Chela Cooking Experience Costa Rica The Chela Cooking Experience turned out to be a two-hour lesson in Doña Chela's actual working kitchen, not some sanitised tourist setup. We cooked gallo pinto over a wood fire, made fresh tortillas, prepared a salsa that tasted nothing like the stuff you buy in jars. Doña Chela was in her seventies, maybe eighties, and she moved through the kitchen with the unselfconscious grace of someone who'd been doing this for fifty years.
What struck me was that she wasn't performing. She wasn't teaching. She was just cooking, and letting me watch, and occasionally handing me something to stir or taste. At one point she said something in rapid-fire Spanish that I didn't catch, and when I asked her to repeat it, she just laughed and patted my hand.
I managed to burn the tortillas. Doña Chela made a sound like a disappointed chicken and showed me how to do it again, standing behind me, guiding my hands.
The Last Morning
I left La Fortuna on a bus that smelled like diesel and bad decisions, which felt appropriate. My phone had died three days in, which meant I'd actually been present for most of it—a rarity in modern travel. I'd booked a quick surf lesson at Jaco Beach before flying out, because I couldn't quite bring myself to go back to normal life.
The Surf Lesson + Beach day in Jaco Beach Surf Lesson + Beach day in Jaco Beach! was mercifully low-key. Two hours in chest-deep water with an instructor who actually understood that beginners need encouragement, not condescension. I didn't catch many waves, but I caught enough to feel like I'd done something.
The Point
What I'm trying to say is: solo travel isn't about finding yourself or whatever Instagram caption you've been saving. It's about getting out of your own way long enough to be changed by something. It's about accidentally booking nine-hour combo tours and losing your flip-flops in turquoise rivers and letting a grandmother in Costa Rica teach you that the best moments are usually unplanned.
I came to La Fortuna looking for material. I left with actual memories—the kind that don't translate to stories until you've already forgotten how to perform them.
Costa Rica will do that to you. And honestly, mate? It's worth it.
