A La Fortuna Coffee Tour, Hour by Hour

The question behind "how long is a La Fortuna coffee tour" is never really about the tour. It is about what else fits around it. Here is the morning minute by minute, and then the day it sits inside.

Before you leave: the fifteen minutes nobody counts

If your booking includes pickup, the van does a short circuit of the hotels within about ten minutes of town and you are on it for that circuit as well as your own leg. Allow twenty minutes either side of the stated start.

If you are making your own way, a taxi across La Fortuna takes about ten minutes and every driver knows these farms. Aim to arrive ten minutes early: the tours start on time and the ranchos are pleasant places to wait.

0:00 to 0:15 — the rancho

You gather under an open-sided timber shelter with a long table, which is the building this whole region is organised around. The guide introduces himself and the farm, somebody hands round a first drink, and the group sorts itself out. Nothing is rushed, and on a quiet morning there may be only two or three of you.

0:15 to 0:45 — the walk through the planting

Twenty to forty minutes on level or gently sloping ground, with frequent stops. This is where cacao flowers get pointed out growing straight from the trunk, where a pod comes off and is split in front of you, and where the coffee rows get explained.

It is also where the wildlife shows up. Sloths, toucans, coatis and armadillos all appear on these farms without being on the itinerary. Walk at the back and look up into the cecropia trees.

0:45 to 1:25 — the processing yard

The working part, and the part that separates a farm morning from a cafe visit. The pulping mill, the fermentation boxes, the drying beds, the roaster and the grinder, in that order. Expect to turn a handle, crack a roasted bean, blow husk off nibs and grind something on a stone.

Ask to spend longer at the fermentation boxes if the guide is willing. It is the least photogenic station and the one that decides how the chocolate tastes — both chains are set out step by step.

1:25 to 1:55 — the tasting table

Back under the rancho roof, in stages rather than all at once. Raw cacao pulp first, then the roasted nib, the ground mass and the finished bar; coffee poured through a cloth chorreador; sugar cane juice on three of these farms and stingless-bee honey on one. On two farms this is where you mould your own chocolates.

1:55 onwards — the shop, and out

Almost every farm finishes at a small shop selling its own roast, bars and honey. It is a genuine last stop rather than the point, nobody applies pressure, and cash is more welcome than a card. Ten minutes is normal; twenty if you are buying presents.

How long is each booking, really?

Durations as published; door-to-door adds the local travel each one implies.

What fits around a morning tour?

Almost everything, which is the real argument for booking one. An eight or ten o'clock start puts you back in town by half past twelve with the whole afternoon open.

• La Fortuna Waterfall — about five hundred steps down and the same back up, forty-five minutes down and an hour up. Best with fresh legs, so pair it with an afternoon farm tour rather than a morning one.
• The hot springs — better late, after you have done something tiring. A morning farm tour and an evening in the pools is the classic La Fortuna day.
• Arenal Volcano National Park — the lava trails need two to three hours and are best in the morning, when the cone is least likely to be in cloud.
• A second farm — cacao in the morning and coffee after lunch is entirely doable, and costs about seventy dollars between them.

What fits around an afternoon tour?

The volcano and the waterfall, both of which reward an early start. One farm's fixed one o'clock and three o'clock departures exist precisely for this: do the steps or the lava field while it is cool and clear, eat in town, then spend the hottest part of the afternoon under a roof grinding cacao.

Between May and November there is a second argument for the reverse order, because the rain tends to arrive after lunch. If the forecast is heavy, take the morning slot and give the afternoon to the hot springs, where the weather does not matter.

How much walking is in it?

Twenty to forty minutes on the planting, plus moving between stations in the yard. Nothing is technical and nothing is steep, but the ground is farm ground and often damp, which is why two listings ban sandals and open-toed shoes outright. Closed shoes with some grip solve it.

If steps or uneven ground are a problem, four of these farms publish cement paths throughout and one roofs them as well. That farm is both the wet-weather choice and the accessible one, which is a useful coincidence — access is set out farm by farm here.

What slows a morning down, and what speeds it up

Three things add time. A pickup circuit adds twenty minutes at each end. A large group adds five or ten minutes at every station, because everybody wants a turn on the grinder. And a genuinely interested group adds time everywhere, which is the good kind of delay.

Two things save it. Making your own way to the gate removes the circuit entirely. And a cacao-only booking runs ninety minutes rather than two hours, because there is one chain rather than two.

A one-day plan that works

1. 07:00. Breakfast in town.
2. 08:00. Farm tour, either the two-in-one trail or the cacao plantation's first departure.
3. 10:45. Back in town, coffee and whatever you bought at the shop.
4. 11:30. La Fortuna Waterfall, allowing two hours with the steps and a swim.
5. 14:30. Late lunch.
6. 16:00. Hot springs until the light goes.

That is a full day with no rushing in it, and the farm morning is the part that makes it work — because it is the only booking short enough to leave the rest intact.

What if the tour runs over?

It happens, and on a small farm it is usually because the group is enjoying itself. Guides here are not working to a coach schedule, so a station that generates questions gets the extra ten minutes. Build half an hour of slack into whatever comes next and it never becomes a problem.

The one case worth planning for is a pickup booking, where the van has to complete a circuit at the end as well as the start. If you have a hard deadline that afternoon, make your own way to the gate instead and you control both ends of the morning.

A two-day plan, if you have the time

Give one day to the volcano and the waterfall and the other to the farms, and put the farm day on whichever morning looks wettest. Two farms in a day is comfortable at these durations, and picking a cacao-led one and the coffee-only one gives you both processes at full depth rather than compressed into a single two-hour booking.

The rest of what is in town, and how it slots together, is on the things-to-do page. Every farm booking above is on La Fortuna coffee farm tours, with the fares and hours side by side on La Fortuna Coffee Tours.

Frequently asked questions