The morning of July, Arenal Volcano woke after roughly 450 quiet years.
The year the volcano went quiet after 42 years of eruptions. It has rested under constant monitoring ever since.
To sleep a family at the volcano: Nayara Gardens for younger children, Nayara Tented Camp's Family Tent for older kids and teenagers.
The Eruption That Built a Playground
In short: Arenal Volcano National Park is one of the best family destinations in Costa Rica: a near-perfect volcanic cone, ziplining, geothermal hot springs, and rainforest dense with sloths, toucans, and monkeys, all a short drive from La Fortuna. The volcano has rested under constant monitoring since 2010. For families, Nayara Gardens suits younger children, with daybeds that keep kids in their parents' room, while Nayara Tented Camp's Family Tent gives older kids and teenagers an adjacent room of their own.
At 7:30 on the morning of July 29, 1968, a mountain the locals considered a hill woke up.
Arenal had been quiet for roughly 450 years, long enough that farms and villages had settled on its flanks. The eruption that morning was sudden and devastating. It took 87 lives and erased three villages, one of them named Tabacon, and it kept erupting, on and off, for the next 42 years. Travelers came from around the world to watch the glow of lava against the night sky, and a farm town at the volcano's feet, La Fortuna, grew into one of the great destinations of the tropics.
Then, in 2010, the volcano went quiet again. It has rested ever since, watched around the clock by Costa Rica's volcanologists, and the region it built kept the gifts: soil so fertile the rainforest grows in fast motion, groundwater heated far below into natural hot springs, and a nearly perfect 1,670 meter cone standing over all of it.
That is the strange arithmetic of Arenal: a catastrophe, given half a century, became the best family playground in Costa Rica. This guide covers how to visit the national park with children, what the volcano left behind for them, and where a family should sleep, because on that last question the answer genuinely depends on how old your kids are.
Visiting the Park with Kids
The national park protects the volcano and the forest around it, and its trails are built for exactly the kind of hiking children do well: short, flat to gently rolling, and full of payoff. The signature walks cross the lava fields of the 1968 eruption, where kids scramble past black volcanic boulders with the cone rising ahead and the forest reclaiming the rock on every side. Most family routes run two to five kilometers and reward slow walkers, because the slower you move here, the more animals you see.
Two honest notes that make the day better. First, nobody climbs to the summit. The upper slopes are closed for safety, and the volcano is best experienced the way it should be, from the trails and viewpoints at its base. Second, bring rain layers whatever the forecast says. This is rainforest, the volcano makes its own weather, and a family that treats the afternoon shower as part of the show has a better day than one that hides from it.
With younger children, a guide changes everything. A good naturalist guide carries a spotting scope, finds the sloth nobody else saw, and turns a walk into the best science class of a childhood. Our concierges arrange guided visits matched to your children's ages and stamina, with transport handled door to door.
The Hot Springs the Volcano Left Behind
Rain filters down through volcanic rock, meets the heat still stored beneath Arenal, and rises back to the surface as naturally warm rivers. The springs are not a resort invention. They are the volcano's second act.
For families, the springs are the great equalizer of an Arenal itinerary: the reward after the hike, the place where the teenager and the toddler finally agree. Several storied springs operate around the volcano and welcome day visitors, Tabacon among them.
At Nayara, the water comes to you. The resorts sit on the same geothermal field, and at Nayara Tented Camp every tented suite carries its own plunge pool fed by the volcanic springs, which means the soak happens on your own deck, on a child's bedtime schedule, with the volcano watching from across the valley. No towels to carry, no crowd, no drive home with wet hair.
The Wildlife Is the Show
Ask a child what they remember about Arenal a year later and it will not be the hike. It will be the animal. The rainforest around the volcano is one of the most biodiverse corners of a country that holds an outsized share of Earth's species, and the cast performs daily: two kinds of sloth, howler monkeys announcing the dawn, toucans working the fruit trees, red-eyed tree frogs appearing at night exactly where the guide said they would.
At Nayara the show continues on property. The hillside our resorts stand on was once bare cattle pasture, replanted over years with tens of thousands of native trees, including cecropias set out specifically for the sloths that now live in them. Children can watch a wild sloth from the breakfast table, which rearranges a family's standards for every hotel that follows.
The full tour of who lives here, from the sloth sanctuary to the frog habitats, is in our Journal guide to the wildlife and natural world of Nayara Resorts.
Nayara Gardens: For Younger Children
The question that decides a family hotel is not the pool. It is where everyone sleeps. With younger children, most parents want their kids in the room with them, close enough to hear, without anyone spending a week on a fold-out.
That is what Nayara Gardens is built for. The family flagship of the portfolio pairs its suites with genuinely comfortable daybeds, real beds a child sleeps well in, set inside the parents' own room. Bedtime stays simple: one door, one nightlight, everyone within reach. Around the room, the resort runs at a child's pace, with gardens to roam, the sloths overhead, and a staff drawn largely from La Fortuna who treat visiting children like the town's own.
Travelers agree in numbers: on TripAdvisor, Gardens is rated the number one hotel in Costa Rica and fourteenth in the world, on the verdict of the people who stayed.
Nayara Tented Camp: For Older Kids and Teens
Somewhere around ten, the equation flips. Older kids and teenagers do not want to sleep in their parents' room, and honestly, the parents have earned a door of their own too. Togetherness starts to work best with a little architecture between everyone.
That is the Family Tent at Nayara Tented Camp: the kids in an adjacent room of their own, connected to yours, separate enough for a teenager's dignity and close enough for a parent's peace of mind. Everyone wakes in the same tented suite compound above the rainforest, meets on the deck, and shares the plunge pool fed by the volcanic springs. The teenager gets independence. You get the sunrise over the volcano in silence. Nobody shares a bathroom schedule.
It helps that the setting flatters this age group. A tented camp reads as adventure, not hotel, and Travel + Leisure readers have named it the number one resort in Central America five of the last six years. Even a fifteen year old finds it hard to be unimpressed, though they may attempt it.
Choosing Between Them
The honest rule of thumb: choose by the age of your youngest. Children under about ten sleep better, and parents rest easier, in the same room, which is Gardens and its daybeds. From about ten up, the Family Tent's adjacent room turns the trip from supervision into a shared adventure. Families spanning both ages tend toward Gardens, since the youngest child's sleep governs everyone's vacation.
Both stand on the same reforested hillside minutes from the national park, both wake to the same volcano, and both share the sloths. Whichever you choose, the concierge builds the park days, the guides, and the transport around your children's ages.
Explore the Full Family Series
The volcano, the wildlife, the vacations, and the whole Nayara world for families.
01 Top 5 Family Adventures in Arenal Volcano National Park → 02 Window to the Wild: Family Travel Across Nayara's Collection → 03 Meet the Neighbors: Costa Rica Animals & Wildlife →Frequently Asked Questions
Is Arenal Volcano safe to visit with children?+
Can you climb Arenal Volcano?+
Which Nayara resort is best for young children?+
Which Nayara resort is best for teenagers?+
Are the hot springs suitable for kids?+
- Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program: Arenal's eruptive history, 1968 to 2010
- OVSICORI-UNA: Costa Rica's volcanological observatory, which monitors Arenal
- Nayara Journal: Window to the Wild, Arenal family vacations
- Nayara Journal: The wildlife and natural world of Nayara Resorts
Sleep at the volcano's feet.
Daybeds in your room for the little ones at Gardens, or the Family Tent's adjacent room for the big ones at Tented Camp.
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