The district's default format, and the safest single booking if this is your only farm morning in Costa Rica. An hour on coffee, an hour on cacao, both growing within sight of each other.
Two hours, split roughly evenly. One half takes coffee from the seed to the cup: the picking rows, the pulper, the drying beds, the roaster and a brew through a cloth chorreador. The other half takes cacao from the seed to the bar, with a hands-on grinding session and a tasting of dark, milk and white.
It is the default format in La Fortuna because the two crops grow within sight of each other on the same smallholdings. You are not travelling between them; you are walking twenty metres.
Because the chains are genuinely different and seeing them side by side is what makes either one land. Coffee's flavour is made in the roast. Cacao's is made days earlier, in a fermentation box, and the roast that follows is gentle. You only notice that if you watch both in one morning.
It is also the safest single booking if this is your only farm visit in Costa Rica. Nobody comes away from a two-in-one feeling they picked the wrong crop.
The trade is breadth against depth, and the price follows it. A two-in-one gives you an hour on each crop; a cacao-only morning gives you ninety minutes to two hours on one.
| Coffee and chocolate tour | Cacao-only tour | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 2 to 2 hrs 30 | 1 hr 30 to 2 hrs |
| From | From $46 | From $30 |
| Coffee, seed to cup | Yes | In the tasting only |
| Cacao, seed to bar | Yes, in an hour | Yes, in full |
| Hotel pickup | On one of them | No |
| Covered in rain | On one of them | Partly |
| Best for | A first farm morning | Children and tight budgets |
Check availability — the three-crop farm morning
If you are short of time or money, take a cacao-only farm: ninety minutes, from the floor price, and the most theatrical hour of the process. The chocolate tours are here.
If you came specifically for coffee, one farm in town leaves cacao out entirely and puts you to work picking, roasting and grinding your own. And if the group wants animals as much as food, the wildlife combinations add a guided trail to the front of the morning.
One of these farms has covered trails and cement paths from one end to the other. In a town where October averages 331 mm of rain, that turns a wet forecast from a compromise into the obvious booking, and it costs the same as the open-air version.
The same design makes it the most accessible of these farms, so wheelchairs and strollers have no trouble on it. Month by month rainfall sets out when you would want it.
Two to five days covers most of the year for a coffee and chocolate tour in La Fortuna, and a week over Christmas and through the spring break. Everything here cancels free up to 24 hours before the start, so a bad forecast is a reason to move a booking rather than skip it. All of them are on La Fortuna Coffee Tours.
Three crops rather than two, and the only fare here that collects you from your hotel. Two of its two and a half hours are spent on the farm itself, which is a generous ratio.
From $46 per person
The classic two-in-one: an hour on the coffee trail, an hour on the chocolate trail, both under a roof on cement paths. Two travellers minimum, and grinding in the middle.
From $61 per person
The same covered trail, sold with transport excluded rather than pickup. Seed to cup and seed to drink in two hours, with tasting sessions built into both halves.
From $61 per person
Coffee and cacao growing side by side on an organic farm, plus several kinds of native stingless-bee honey. The tasting station at the end pours all three without a limit.
From $56 per person
Coffee, cacao and sugar cane as the second half of a three-hour morning, after a guided sloth trail with spotting scopes. Beverages included, transport and lunch not.
From $100 per person
Transport from downtown La Fortuna, a sloth walk, then demonstrations and tastings of coffee, chocolate and cane. A bilingual guide runs the whole three hours.
From $99 per person
Two hours on the farm for most of them, or two and a half if you take the one that includes pickup. Allow twenty minutes either side for getting there.
The farm with covered trails and cement paths from end to end. It runs through heavy rain without changing anything, and it costs the same as the open-air version. More on rain and refunds.
It is fresh, arabica and roasted in front of you, which counts for a lot. It is not a high-altitude specialty lot and no farm here claims otherwise. What 253 metres does to the coffee.
Not necessarily. One of these fares includes hotel pickup within about ten minutes of town and one collects from downtown. For the rest a taxi across La Fortuna costs a few dollars.
One operator sells its two-in-one trail on both booking platforms at the same fare. The morning is identical; only the way the inclusions are written up differs, so read those rather than the title.