Costa Rica
Arenal & La Fortuna
Hot springs steaming through jungle beneath a volcano's perfect cone at dusk.
Steam rises from the river in slow coils, curling through ferns and heliconia before dissolving against the darkening cone of Arenal. The water is body-warm where the thermal springs surface, hotter the closer you wade to their source. La Fortuna sits at the volcano's base in Costa Rica's Northern Plains, a town built on geothermal heat beneath a mountain that roared for forty-two years.
Arenal is a stratovolcano with a cone so symmetrical it looks engineered rather than geological. It burst into life in 1968 and erupted almost continuously for four decades, remaking the region from cattle country into Costa Rica's adventure heartland; since October 2010 it has stood quiet, though the heat beneath it never left. Thermal rivers still surface warm out of volcanic ground, threading through jungle gardens and wild forest pools. South of town, the Fortuna River hurls itself 70 metres into a forested canyon — a community-run reserve where some five hundred steps descend to a pool you can swim in, and every ticket helps build the town's schools and roads.
Couple
Lodges face the cone across the forest, and soaking in a thermal river at dusk while the volcano's silhouette sharpens against the sky is Costa Rica at its most effortlessly intimate.
Family
Gentle hot springs, wildlife-rich trails and cacao farms where children roast and grind their own chocolate mean every age finds its speed.
Friends
Adventure by day — rivers, canyons, the old lava fields — and thermal pools with a volcano view by night; a group can split by nerve and regroup by dinner.
- Thermal rivers surface body-warm from volcanic ground, winding through jungle gardens and wild forest pools.
- The volcano's forty-two-year eruptive phase ended in October 2010 — today the drama is the perfect cone above and the heat below.
- The Fortuna River drops 70 metres inside a community-run forest reserve, and visitor income builds the town's schools, roads and sports fields.
- Lake Arenal spreads beneath the cone for boat trips and adventure sports, with a back road winding toward Monteverde.
Charcoal-grilled freshwater bass with palmito salad — the lake's own catch, eaten with the volcano in view.
Bean-to-bar chocolate from the cacao farms ringing town — roasted, ground and poured as thick drinking chocolate.
Åre
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Scandinavia's alpine capital — a lakeside village beneath a World Championship mountain.
Niseko
Japan
Powder so dry and deep that falling into it feels like sinking into cold silk.
Paradise Valley
Morocco
The crowds stop at the first pools. The turquoise ones run thirty kilometres upstream.
Pucón
Chile
A lakefront town wakes beneath the monitored, snow-lined cone of Villarrica.
Drake Bay
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Scarlet macaws wheel over a rainforest bay where the day's traffic is boat wakes.
Tamarindo
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Sunset surf sessions where pelicans dive-bomb the lineup and howler monkeys heckle from shore.
Manuel Antonio
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Capuchins patrol the sand beneath dozing sloths where rainforest walks into the ocean.
Punta Islita
Costa Rica
Every surface in this village became a canvas — walls, fences, even the trees.