The Plan Was Simple (It Never Is)
I rolled into La Fortuna with a hangover, a broken flip-flop, and the kind of optimism that only comes from three hours of sleep and excellent coffee. The plan was straightforward: spend five days chasing adrenaline through Costa Rica's northwestern pocket, hit some water, eat some food, maybe see a volcano if it wasn't too cloudy. What could go wrong?
Everything, as it turned out. But not in the way I expected.
La Fortuna is the kind of town that doesn't try too hard. There's a main drag with casados and sodas, tour operators on every corner, and an underlying current of "yeah, mate, we've got whatever you need." I'd booked the Combo 3 Best Tours In La Fortuna Combo 3 Best Tours In La Fortuna for my first full day—figured I'd knock out three activities in one go rather than faff about with logistics. Volcano views, rainforest, hot springs. Sorted.
The pickup came at 6am. My guide, Carlos, was a dude in his fifties who'd seen exactly zero tourists surprise him in two decades. We started with Arenal itself, which was being a moody bastard behind clouds, then dropped into the rainforest proper for a trek. The canopy here is thick enough that you forget the sun exists. Howler monkeys sounding like dinosaur divorces in the canopy. Poison dart frogs the size of your fingernail, brilliant blue and absolutely lethal. By the time we hit the natural hot springs—fed by geothermal activity from the volcano—my legs were done and my brain was thoroughly scrambled with wonder.
Then I made a rookie error. I mentioned I wanted to hit Río Celeste.
Tubing in Neon
Costa Rica's most famous river should come with a warning: it looks too good to be real because the internet has lied to you with filters for years. Except it's actually real. The water is legitimately that turquoise—volcanic minerals, pure geology, no Photoshop required. It's the kind of colour that makes you question whether your eyes are working properly.
Tubing in Rio Celeste Tubing in Rio Celeste was booked for the morning after the combo tour, and I was still sore. My guide showed up with inner tubes and a slightly concerned expression when he clocked my shuffle. "You okay, hermano?"
"Just recovering from yesterday. I'm good."
I was not good. But I was committed.
We hauled the tubes down to the riverbank where about a dozen other travellers were already gearing up. The water looked unreal—almost toxic in its brightness. Our guide did a safety brief that basically amounted to "hold on, dodge rocks, don't fall out," which seemed adequately detailed for a Tuesday morning.
Once you're in, the panic subsides. The current is mellow enough that you're not screaming, fast enough that it feels like something's actually happening. The tubes keep you afloat with minimal effort. Around the bends, the jungle crowds in tight, cathedral-like. At one point, a toucan—an actual toucan, mate—flew overhead close enough that I could see its eyelids. The river does this thing where it splits into sections of different depths and colours, shallows that let you see the mineral composition shifting beneath you.
I got knocked sideways by a submerged rock around halfway through, ended up half-out of my tube, got yanked back in by a French bloke who was clearly more hydrated than I was. By the end, I was grinning like an idiot and already plotting when I could do it again.
Cooking With Consequence
I needed rehabilitation. A proper meal. Someone to teach me how to not butcher Costa Rican food.
Enter Doña Chela.
Costa Rica The Chela Cooking Experience Costa Rica The Chela Cooking Experience is what happens when you give someone's actual abuela control of a kitchen and a couple of tourists. Chela's place isn't a cooking school in the glossy sense. It's a working kitchen in a proper home, wood-fired stove, ingredients sourced that morning, the whole bit.
She started with us making gallo pinto—rice and beans, which sounds boring until you realise there's an actual technique to it. The way the cilantro gets treated, the timing of when the beans hit the pan, how you know it's done by feel rather than time. Two hours with Chela felt like a masterclass in "paying attention to food."
We made fresh tortillas. We prepared a salsa that made me tear up. We discussed the proper way to treat plantains with the intensity of philosophers debating Kant. At one point, Chela told me off for cutting an onion wrong, and I felt genuinely ashamed, which is ridiculous but also kind of beautiful.
By the end, we ate what we'd made—sitting around her kitchen table, drinking agua fresca, listening to her stories about running that kitchen for thirty years. No Instagram moment. Just proper food and a human connection that doesn't fit neatly into a blog post.
The Night the Jungle Got Real
With my confidence slightly elevated, I booked Tour and Night Walk La Fortuna Tour and Night Walk La Fortuna for the following evening. This is where La Fortuna gets dark. Literally.
Night walks through jungle are an entirely different species from day hikes. Everything looks sinister. Sounds that were pleasant at 2pm sound actively threatening at 8pm. Our guide, a local naturalist named Roberto, handed out torch headlamps and gave us a lecture on respect. "The jungle is not your enemy," he said. "But it is not your friend either. It doesn't care about you. Move with respect."
We waded into trails alongside lagoons where caimans floated like logs. Frogs shrieked—tree frogs, leaf frogs, poison darts in the undergrowth. The beam of my torch caught a vine snake, perfectly still, watching us with the patience of a predator. Roberto explained its habits like we were in a university classroom. The humidity was oppressive. Our guides were calm. We were not.
The ANURA night walk, which is the actual name of this tour, does something to your head. In daylight, jungles feel manageable. At night, they remind you that you're the visitor here. Everything else is home. By the time we came back to town, I was buzzing with the particular kind of adrenaline that comes from genuine uncertainty.
The Wave That Nearly Ended Me
I had one more day before flying south. Stupidly, I decided to finally take a surf lesson.
Jaco Beach is not a secret. It's a town full of surfers, beachfront bars, and that particular energy of a place that knows exactly what it is and doesn't apologise for it. I'd booked the Surf Lesson + Beach day in Jaco Beach Surf Lesson + Beach day in Jaco Beach! partly because I needed to tick that box, and partly because my shoulders needed the punishment.
My instructor, Diego, took one look at me and asked how many times I'd surfed. I lied and said "a few times." The truth was once, and badly. He nodded, unconvinced, and got me on a board in thigh-deep water.
Surfing looks easy from the beach. It is not easy. It is humbling. I wiped out approximately four thousand times in two hours. By the end, I rode exactly one wave for about six metres before face-planting. Diego assured me it counted as progress. The lesson stays shallow enough that you're not drowning, but deep enough that you feel the genuine power of the ocean pushing you around like a toy.
After, I sat on the beach with a cold beer, sunburned and exhausted, watching actual surfers catch waves with the grace of people who'd stopped fighting the ocean and started dancing with it.
The Letting Go Part
Five days in Costa Rica doesn't solve anything, but it does something worse: it reminds you that you're small and the world is large. Every tour, every activity, every moment of genuine discomfort—it's all pointing at the same thing. Stop planning so hard. Embrace the chaos. Eat the food. Get wet. Watch the frogs at night.
I lost another flip-flop somewhere between La Fortuna and Jaco. The hangover from day one never fully went away. I got sunburned in places I didn't know could sunburn. And I'd do it all again tomorrow.
Costa Rica doesn't coddle you. It just gives you the space to figure out what you actually need versus what you thought you wanted. Sometimes that space involves tubing down a neon river. Sometimes it's an old woman teaching you how to cook rice properly. Sometimes it's standing in a dark jungle with a torch, trying not to scream at a caiman.
It's honest. It's messy. It's exactly what a dirtbag needs.
