How Many Activities Can You Pack Into A Day In Arenal, Costa Rica?

If you’re coming to Lake Arenal for a wakeboarding session, then you might be wondering what else you can get up to.

This lake is adjacent to Arenal National Park, which is one of the most beautiful regions in the country. Known for its vast rainforests, the quaint town of La Fortuna, and the incredible Arenal Volcano, there are so many things to enjoy while you’re here, no matter what kind of schedule you are on.

But what if you’re on the tightest of schedules? While some people like to stretch their Arenal visit out by a week or more, some only have time to visit in a single day. So what can you get up to in one day and can you really pack everything in? Well, we’re about to find out.

Customising Your Wakeboarding Experience

The first thing to know is that our boat rentals are customisable. When you’re out on our 2022 Super Air Nautique G23 – a superb piece of machinery if we do say so ourselves – you can do anything from practice watersports, take in the views, have some dinner, or simply chill and watch the world go by. In the same way, your Lake Arenal experience can be as long or as short as you want it to be. With this in mind, you can start your activity-filled day with a few hours of Lake Arenal, and then move straight on to the next thing.

Exploring the Town of La Fortuna

If you’ve decided to spend the whole time wakeboarding, then it’s safe to say you would have worked up an appetite. The best place to quench it, then, is the town of La Fortuna, which is just a short drive away. There, you’ll find a popular spot known as The Corner Restaurant. On Google, it’s received 4.1 stars out of 5, and many reviews claim it serves the best food in the country. Outside of this, La Fortuna is a great place to meet some locals and really get a sense of what the culture is like on this side of Costa Rica.

Seeing the Gorgeous La Fortuna Waterfall

We don’t think there’s been a single tourist who has visited La Fortuna and not gone on to see La Fortuna waterfall. This is a large, 230-foot waterfall that resides in the biological reserve of Arenal National Park, set just outside of town. For many people, it’s also one of the top activities to cross off the Costa Rican bucket list. To see it, you need to follow a path through the jungle and then climb 530 steps, but the view at the top makes all of that more than worth it. Once those steps are climbed and the waterfall is experienced, you can also cool off by taking a dip in the pool beneath, so don’t worry about getting too sweaty!

Walking the Mistico Hanging Bridges

You’ll get a good sense of what the rainforest is like when visiting La Fortuna waterfall, but for a better view, we’d highly recommend trying out the Mistico Hanging Bridges. These are suspended bridges that hang above the Arenal rainforest itself, taking you more than 3.2 km through the treeline. For those who want to learn more about the forest and its ecological history, you can book an afternoon walking tour, where a guide will explain all the facts about Arenal National Park, and will even help point out and identify all of the wildlife that you come across – and believe us, you will come across a lot of wildlife.

Braving the Venado Caves

By this point, we’d say you’re moving toward late afternoon, so it’s time to wrap this day up with one final activity. While there are still plenty to choose from -- you haven't even visited the base of Arenal Volcano! -- we reckon the most fun are the Venado Caves, which are located around 6 km west of La Fortuna.

Even for those who are uncomfortable with tight spaces, this is a unique and unmissable nature experience that will see you exploring the 6 million-years-old cave system, along with beautiful waterfalls, numerous stalagmites and stalactites, and even some more wildlife – the caves are known to harbour several fish, creepy crawlies, and four species of bats. If you want a different look at this country’s ecological wonders, then this is the best place to get it.

Arenal in A Day

So there we have it! Five activities for you to experience, including watersports, fine food, waterfalls, rainforests, suspended bridges, cave explorations – all in a single day at Arenal. Of course, we’d always recommend staying longer to really give time to everything, but you don’t have to panic if your schedule is tight. No matter how much time you have, Arenal will always make time for you.