River Tubing in La Fortuna
The cheapest, gentlest and most sociable way to get on a river here — and the only water activity a whole family can genuinely do together.
What the float is like
You sit in an inflated tube, feet up, and let the river carry you. The La Fortuna river runs clear and cool off the volcano's flank through farmland and rainforest, with enough gradient to keep you moving and enough small rapids to spin you around and make everyone shriek.
Guides float alongside in their own tubes. They push people off rocks, tow anyone who gets stuck in an eddy, and round the group up at the bottom. Reckon on about an hour and a half on the water and half a day in total.
How it differs from rafting
Rafting is a crew sport — eight people paddling on command in a boat that a guide steers through class III water. Tubing is the opposite: no paddling, no commands, no boat, and a river a fraction of the size.
The trade is control. In a raft you are inside something substantial with a guide doing the work. In a tube you are a person sitting on the surface of a river, and you will end up in the water at some point. That is the fun of it and also the reason operators set an age limit and put you in a helmet and a life jacket.
If your group is choosing one river day and half of it is under twelve, tube. If everyone is a confident swimmer looking to be worked, raft instead.
Who it suits
Almost everybody, which is rare here. Children from around five to eight upward depending on the operator and the water level. Grandparents. People who do not consider themselves adventurous. Teenagers who have declared every other suggestion boring.
It is also the best-value guided thing in La Fortuna. Rafting and canyoning are premium-priced because of guide ratios and equipment; tubing needs a tube, a helmet and a truck, and the price reflects it.
What the river is, and why it is warm
The La Fortuna river comes off the flank of Arenal, which means it is fed by rainfall on the volcano rather than by snowmelt or a reservoir. In practice that makes it cool but never cold — you can float it in a t-shirt for ninety minutes without getting the teeth-chattering misery that tubing in a temperate country involves.
It also runs clear most of the time. The water has a short journey from the cloud that dropped it to the point you sit down in it, so outside of heavy rain you can see the riverbed. The banks are farm and secondary forest, and you will pass people washing cars, children swimming and the occasional horse standing in the shallows, which is a truer picture of La Fortuna than most excursions give you.
What to bring
- A swimsuit, worn under your clothes — there is nowhere to change
- Shoes that strap on. Sandals with a heel strap are ideal; flip-flops are lost within a minute
- Sunscreen, applied before you leave
- Dry clothes and a towel for the drive back
Leave everything else. Phones go with the guide in a dry bag or stay in the vehicle, and anything in a pocket is gone.
Booking it for a group
Tubing is the easiest thing here to arrange at short notice. Tubes are cheap, the guide ratio is lower than on a raft, and operators can usually take a party of fifteen with a day's warning rather than the several days rafting needs.
The one thing to settle in advance is the age floor, because it moves with the water level. An operator happy to take a six-year-old in March may decline in October, and finding that out at the riverbank with a disappointed child is the failure mode worth avoiding. Give them the real ages when you book, not a rounded-up guess.
When to go
Mornings are more reliable — La Fortuna's afternoons cloud over and the river comes up after rain. After genuinely heavy rain trips are cancelled, since a small river rises fast. In the drier months the flow can drop enough that the float gets slow and you scrape more, so ask what the river is doing rather than booking a week out.
It also works as a half day, which almost nothing else here does. That makes it the natural pairing with a morning at the hanging bridges or an afternoon at the springs.
Doing it from the lodge
Operators collect from your accommodation, so from The Majestic Lodge it is a pickup at the door and a short drive round the volcano. For groups we book it and confirm the age limits against who you are actually bringing, which is the detail that trips people up. What we arrange →