Arenal National Park is one of the most visited National Parks in all of Costa Rica. The gateway town to the Park is La Fortuna, which has lots of hotels, restaurants, shops and guided tours available – and we visited from our hotel, Nayara Springs. The National Park is home to two volcanoes (Arenal and Chato), which you can see up close from the National Park. It’s also a haven for wildlife and a great opportunity to spot an interesting array of birds, frogs and much more.

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Visitor Information & when to visit

The Park is open 8am to 4pm, with an entrance fee of $15 (at time of visit, November 2022).

The easiest way to get to the Park is by car. You can drive to the main visitor centre in about 20 minutes from La Fortuna, and you can access the Peninsula sector in 30 minutes. If driving to the Peninsula section, access is offroad so drive carefully!

If you don’t have a car, then I recommend visiting on a tour from La Fortuna, as there is no bus to the site and Uber is patchy at best. Most hotels in the area offer tours as part of their services so that’s definitely the easiest way to visit.

The weather in Arenal National Park is variable to say the least. Officially dry season is December to April, with May to November being rainy season. This is a rainforest though so of course it rains all year round. We visited in November and there were days that were sunny with a few rainy spells, and days where the rain was so heavy we couldn’t leave our villa for 15 hours. It’s not predictable.

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About the Park

The Park is divided in to two sections – the Main Park (Lava Fields section) and the Peninsula section which is best for seeing Lake Arenal up close.

At the heart of the Park lies Arenal Volcano, which last erupted in 1968. It’s currently inactive but is the most active volcano in Costa Rica and classed as the 10th most dangerous in the world. The last eruption destroyed the rainforest there at the time, so today the forest is around 60 years old and a mixture of primary and secondary rainforest.

The Park is an absolute haven for seeing birds, plus other animals. We were so lucky and managed to see lots of spider monkeys playing above our heads which was truly special. We didn’t see any sloths, and if you are wanting to see those wonderful animals then the Bogarin Trail is a great place to do this.

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The Lava Fields Section

In 1968, the Arenal Volcano eruption destroyed the towns of Tabacon and Pueblo Nuevo, in one of the worst natural catastrophes in Costa Rica. Nowadays, visitors can hike through the leftover lava rocks of the eruption on the 1968 trails in the main section of the National Park. The trail starts on the flat, through a varied jungle landscape. During this section, we saw 2 crested caracaras and a beautiful yellow throated toucan, as well as lots of interesting plants and trees.

Follow the Coladas de Lava (Lava flow) trail and you will walk out of the forest and through some lava fields. The walk is quite steep and over difficult terrain so you need good mobility to do it.

At the top, you will come to a clearing of lava rocks where you will get a spectacular view of the volcano (if it’s a clear day, which it absolutely was not for me – as my photos below show!), so I’ve included a photo of what it should like, and how it looked for me. I still can’t stop laughing every time I see them!

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The Peninsula Section

The Peninsula section of the park is made up of a flat and easy trail through the rainforest, about 3km long and bringing you out right at the shore of Lake Arenal. And woop – the sun came out and we got a peek at the vocano finally!

The walk was lovely (and there were less people than in the main park), providing stunning views out to the volcano and lake. We combined it with a boat trip but in typical Arenal weather fashion, had to abandon it as there was a storm and our boat started flooding…by this point I was used to it!

This was the section of the Park where we saw 4 or 5 spider monkeys playing above our heads. One even fell out of the tree. It was the highlight of our visit to the Park. We also saw a hawk and a Coati.

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Do I need a guide and how long should I spend in the park?

My simple answer is yes to being with a guide. Now normally I am the first to shun a guide, wanting to go at my own pace BUT without a guide in the park I literally wouldn’t have seen any wildlife. The animals hide in the trees (obviously), and are SO hard to spot. An expert guide meant we saw so much more than we would have done ourselves.

We spent two days in the Park, but only because the weather was awful for us. You could easily do both areas in one day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon – however on both trips for us the weather was so bad in the afternoon (monsoon rains) that we had to abandon afternoon activity and instead we did it over two mornings – both sections needing roughly 3.5-4hrs to take in properly.

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I hope this post is helpful if you’re planning a trip to Costa Rica or the Arenal area – it’s a wonderful country with so much to offer and see. This post concludes my time in the Arenal area and we’re off to Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast next! Thanks as always for reading!