Exotic Costa Rican Adventures for the Entire Family

Canopy tours plus

The most popular attraction in the reserve a tour of the tree top canopy. Using walkways suspended 100 feet and more in the air, we waded through the mist listening for and catching glimpses of monkeys, toucans, quetzals and other wildlife. Another option is zip lining, which you can read more about below.

Monteverde offers more than its famous cloud forest. You’ll also find mountain biking, a working coffee farm and horseback riding. (Read more about ecotourism options in the area in our related Monteverde article.)

To Zip or Not to Zip

Costa Rica put zip lining on the map, and there are more than 65 places in the country where you can experience this suspended flight through the jungle. Our adrenaline-junkie family had to try it. It looks scary from the ground, but we found that the staff from the tour operator we used in Monteverde was safety conscious, helpful and professional in every way possible.

We certainly did zip through the rainforest canopy. However, the experience is one of an adrenaline rush set in the rainforest, and little more. If you want to see wildlife in a serene setting, choose a suspended walkway. The noise generated by the trolleys and those dangling underneath them are your guarantee that any wildlife is hiding away from the noise.

• Even small children can enjoy zip lines with a tandem guide to keep them safe.
• John Higham

Wildlife viewing is best in the early hours of the morning and comes to those with patience. But after your morning nature encounter, find yourself a reputable zip line operator and spend the afternoon engaging in pure, screaming, high-altitude fun.

Children will present special concerns, the most obvious being that they may not be up for the rush of a zip line. That wasn’t a problem for us, as our kids shame the adults when it comes to seeking out bigger and bigger thrills. We faced a different issue that we weren’t prepared for—whining.

To our surprise we found that children are not typically allowed to go alone on a zip line and can’t be paired with a parent, so they’re strapped in with a guide. If the passenger doesn’t weigh enough, the trolley might not gain enough speed to reach the end of the line and the trolley slows to a stop before it reaches the next platform, leaving little Timmy dangling 100 feet in the air between two platforms. Our kids simply hated being strapped in with a guide—they had anticipated freedom and adventure and instead found themselves encircled in the arms of a total stranger.

• The famous La Fortuna waterfall near Volcán Arenal.
• arvind s grover

Volcán Arenal

Not far from the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve is the equally famous Volcán Arenal, near the town of La Fortuna. Although La Fortuna and Monteverde are a mere 16 miles apart, the continental divide and 85 very bumpy miles of road separate the two towns. Of the three ways to reach La Fortuna from Monteverde, the combination horse/boat/4x4 trek is the most memorable.

We settled into one of La Fortuna’s many hostels and quickly found that one of the area’s big pastimes after a day’s hiking is to sit in the nearby natural hot springs, swim up to the bar and order margaritas in the shadow of an active volcano spewing red lava. Using the logic that everyone else was doing it, so it must be OK, we went to the hot springs and let our two kids order non-alcoholic margaritas.

My 10-year-old son, Jordan, sat at the swim-up bar and wore a huge grin. He kept talking to himself, but the only thing he was saying was, “I really like this place. I really like this place. I really like this place …”

Suddenly, he was spewing volcano facts that I never knew were inside him.

• A visitor relaxes in a hammock within view of the active Volcán Arenal.
• Adam Baker

“Oh really?” I said. “And how is it you know so much about volcanoes?”

“We studied them in first grade.”

Come to think of it, all my volcano knowledge probably went back to the first grade, too.

(Read Katrina Higham’s account of hiking Arenal.)