La Fortuna

Little is known of the people who lived in this part of the northern plains before colonisation; by the time settlers arrived, only traces of an earlier population remained. The town was founded in the mid-1930s by farming families from Ciudad Quesada, Grecia, Alajuela and other parts of the region, who first called it El Burío. At the end of the 1940s they renamed it La Fortuna — "the fortune" — after the fertile land, and the district was formally created in 1952. The popular story that the name celebrates the town's escape from the volcano is a myth: the name came first.

For hundreds of years Arenal had been dormant, a forested cone with small fumaroles. In 1968 it erupted unexpectedly, destroying the village of Tabacón, devastating others on its western flank and opening new craters on that side. The eruption did not reach La Fortuna, which lies to the east of the peak.

The eruption went on until December 2010 — by duration one of the longest on Earth since 1750 — and the active volcano turned the farming village into a destination for visitors. Lodges and hot-spring resorts spread along the road west of town, and the volcano, the older Chato and Lake Arenal are now protected within a national park. Arenal has been dormant since 2010, and visitors now come for the springs, the forest, the waterfall and the lake.

La Fortuna's identity is that of a farming town settled by families from Ciudad Quesada, Grecia, Alajuela and other parts of the region, and it keeps much of the plain courtesy of rural Costa Rica: people greet one another before getting to business, use the formal usted, and answer most things with pura vida. The Catholic church and the central park, with its view of the volcano, are the heart of the town.

The volcano shapes local life and local pride. The town's name is often explained as thanks for its escape from the 1968 eruption, but the name, given in the late 1940s, refers to the fortune of its fertile land. Since the eruption years, tourism has become the town's main business, and many local people earn their living from guiding, driving and running lodges and agencies.

Outside tourism, the surrounding countryside belongs to the cattle and dairy culture of the San Carlos plains, centred on Ciudad Quesada, the canton's head town. Hot water from the volcano is part of everyday life too: alongside the paid resorts, a stretch of warm river near Tabacón is open to everyone without charge.

The district of La Fortuna had an estimated 16,150 people in 2022, up from 15,383 at the 2011 census; it is part of the canton of San Carlos in Alajuela province. The town itself is small, a grid of streets around the park with houses, shops, sodas and tour agencies, while lodges and resorts stretch along the roads towards the volcano and the lake.

Tourism is the main employer, alongside cattle and dairy farming and crops such as pineapple on the surrounding plains. Ciudad Quesada, the canton's head town and the economic centre of the region, is the place for larger shops and services; its district produces a large share of the country's milk. Rain is part of the routine for much of the year.

Getting around depends on tour companies, which collect visitors from their hotels, and a handful of taxis that wait beside the park; buses link the town with San José and Ciudad Quesada. The busiest months are the drier ones from December to April, when the volcano is most often in view.

Food in La Fortuna is Costa Rican home cooking, and rice and beans are part of nearly every meal. Breakfast is gallo pinto, rice and black beans, served with tortillas and natilla, a thin sour cream; lunch is a casado of rice, beans, salad, fried plantain and meat, eaten at the sodas, the small family-run diners around the central park. Olla de carne, a beef and root-vegetable soup, and chifrijo, beans with fried pork (chicharrón), are common too.

The surrounding farms supply much of what is served. Pineapple from the plains is eaten fresh and blended into frescos, fruit drinks made with water or milk. Beef and dairy from the San Carlos cattle country are part of everyday meals.

Away from the sodas, the town has a growing number of restaurants aimed at visitors, from international cooking to places with views of the volcano along the road west. Coffee is drunk throughout the day, often brewed through a cloth chorreador.