Is Costa Rica Kid-friendly?

Awe-inspiring in Arenal

I just returned from an amazing adventure retreat in Costa Rica and could not wait to share the place we stayed in Arenal. When I host International retreats I use a third-party company to arrange all the transfers, book local guides and take care of the room assignments and activities. They typically only use 4 star properties and when we arrived in Arenal, I knew they hit this one out of the park.

First, Costa Rica doesn’t even have an army and the people are so lovely and nice. Their main industry is tourism, so it is extremely easy to move around the country and find nice places to stay and things to do. When I first went to Costa Rica several years ago we hired a driver and went to Santa Theresa. When I went for a yoga retreat as a student I flew down to the Nicoya Peninsula and stayed at Blue Osa. For this retreat we split our time between Arenal and Portero Beach.

For our stay in Arenal we were booked at the Arenal Springs Thermal Resort & Spa Hotel, Arenal. Arenal is about a three hour drive from San Jose Airport so you could either rent a car or hire a driver to take you here. It’s fairly easy to drive around Costa Rica, but just watch the traffic and buses as the drivers there are kind of crazy! Arenal has a lot of thermal hot springs because of the volcano so this is a perfect area if you love hot springs. Our hotel had a great restaurant for breakfast, a coffee shop on site and you could choose between three different areas to eat in. You could also charge everything to your room which made it nice so you didn’t have to carry your credit card around. They had a nice fitness facility, yoga classes you could enjoy, massages and of course, amazing views of the volcano.

So what’s there to do in the area? La Fortuna is the little city that is right outside of where we stayed where there are shops and restaurants. We had our retreat shuttle driver take us into town, but I’m sure the hotel could arrange a shuttle if you wanted as the town is not within walking distance. We also spent a day at the Mistico Hanging Bridges Park and then went to zipline at Costa Rica Sky Adventures.

We ate lunch at Mistico and I highly recommend if going here that you arrive early because the park gets busy and space is limited for parking. This is a really popular area for monkeys and bird watching so you’ll see a lot of guides and photographers here. I honestly loved having a guide here to point out things like tree frogs and certain species of bugs and birds that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Closed toe shoes are a must here.

I highly recommend Costa Rica Sky Adventures. Not only were the staff incredible to work with, the zipline was incredible and they even take photos of you which you can buy. You can also rent a helmet that has a GoPro Mount or use their GoPro and get all the photos and videos for $40. You won’t be able to hold a camera or GoPro in your hand because you need both hands to hold on to the zipline, but you can take photos on the platforms. If someone is nervous about the zipline, you can take the tram up to the top and do the practice zipline. If you don’t like it, then you can come down. We had some nervous guests, but everyone enjoyed it and completed the whole tour!

We had several scheduled tours around Arenal, but there are many waterfalls and hikes to discover here as well that you can scout out without a paid tour. In the past I had always come to Costa Rica and headed straight for the beach, but I realize I was missing out on hiking, waterfalls and hot springs with volcano views in the northern part of the country. If you haven’t been to Costa Rica before I highly recommend making the trek here, you don’t need a Visa or Covid test to enter or leave the country and even if you don’t speak Spanish, most all of the locals speak both English and Spanish.

This is just part one of our adventure, but I’ll be publishing a part 2 on our journey down to Portero Beach next.

I am also putting together a VIP signup list for those who want to join me on a bucket-list African Safari Retreat in South Africa 2024. If you are interested please join my VIP email list here. Just scroll to the bottom and hit subscribe or reply to this email to be added!

I hope this helped inspire your next getaway and you consider Costa Rica for an adventure. Our summer is their rainy season so it’s best visited in the spring and fall, but really there’s no off-season for adventure…just pack a rain jacket if you find yourself there over the summer!