The Rincon de la Vieja National Park is one of Costa Rica's highlights, some 20-25 km of Liberia, where loads of planes land each day filled with tourists. It is therefore easily accessible and many tours are available, even from the beach hotels further along the Pacific coast & the Nicoya peninsula. It is the ONLY national park where the... More

We unfortunately got to Rincon de la Vieja in the middle of the afternoon, only to learn that the park closes at 4PM, which didn't really leave us enough time to fully explore the Las Pailas trails (Las Pailas is supposed to be the more interesting of two areas, the other being the Santa Maria area). The friendly guide did... More

My husband and I hired an outstanding guide, Javier Perez Chavez on our visit to Rincon de la Vieja (Feb 11, 2012) . He was exceedingly knowledgeable, adopted an interactive approach and spoke excellent English. He was very familiar with other parks, especially Monteverde and as such helped us to arrange additional visits to them and even asked that we... More

My husband and I spent the day in the park. We took a tour with Costa Rica Friendly and did the Pure Adrenaline Tour. Our tour guide was Juan Carlos Castañeda. We started the day with a one-hour horseback ride, followed by tubing through a canyon. The horse ride was safe, but not too slow and boring. The tubing was... More

I visited the park in February. Unfortunately I could not climb up the volcano but I did the "volcanic activity" circle loop - I spotted monkeys and several birds (including motmots). In the afternoon I hiked to the waterfall, which was more difficult than I thought but not too much if you are in good shape. Bring hiking shoes (no... More

We travelled here again with Jacamar Tours. We chose the Canyon Combo excursions, which involved horseback riding, rapelling, rock climbing, zip lining, river tubing and hot mud body scrubs. We loved it all!! The park and grounds are gorgeous, like every other volcano in Costa Rica. The staff was great. We purchased a video of us doing zip lining and... More

A friend and I set off for what a park ranger told us was an easy 3-4 km. walk to a variety of geothermal sites on a loop trail that he said would take us a couple of hours to do. Fortunately we had good weather because the trail was much more arduous than we expected. We clambered over tree... More

What I like best about this park is that it's not taken over by commercialization and commerce, it's still a wild and beautiful national park and that is something really special I think. There is a minimal fee to enter, even more minimal if you are from Costa Rica. The park workers will tell you which paths are open, often... More

This is just one of Costa Rica's national parks and each has its own identity. The landscape here is shaped by volcanic action and there are boiling mud pools, lakes of sulphur and fumaroles. you can spend an hour here or the whole day. There are trails all through the park and you can have a guide if you wish.... More