Arenal & La Fortuna

Steam rises from the river in slow coils, curling through ferns and heliconia before dissolving against the darkening cone of Arenal Volcano. The water is body-warm where the thermal springs surface, hotter further upstream. La Fortuna sits at the volcano's base in Costa Rica's Northern Plains, a town built on geothermal heat and the quiet thrill of living beside something that last erupted in 1968.

Arenal is a 1,633-metre stratovolcano with the kind of symmetrical cone that makes it look engineered rather than geological. Its catastrophic eruption buried the village of Tabacón and shifted the region's economy from cattle ranching to adventure tourism in a single day. The thermal rivers it heats now wind through landscaped jungle gardens and wild forest pools alike, with water temperatures ranging from 25°C to over 50°C depending on proximity to the source. Within twenty minutes of La Fortuna's main street, visitors access whitewater rafting on the Balsa River, canyoning down volcanic gorges, and zip-lines threading through primary forest. On clear evenings — rarer than the brochures suggest — the volcano's flanks catch the sunset in a way that justifies every photograph ever taken of it.