Around Arenal This Season: What's New Along Route 142, In Town, And On The Community Calendar

Five years ago, the drive west out of La Fortuna on Route 142 was a checklist of gated resort entrances. Tabacón. Baldi. The Springs. The road existed to move visitors from town to hot springs and back. If you lived in La Fortuna and wanted to soak, your choice was to pay a resort day rate or scramble down a dirt path behind a wire fence and share a river with strangers wearing flip-flops.

That geography is shifting. The Route 142 corridor has picked up a service building at the free river. The downtown has picked up a food court that keeps residents in town after dark. And the community itself is picking up a stage in Brazil this October. The story of Arenal this season is a town gaining the connective tissue a resident city needs, without losing the informal texture that made living here different from Escazú in the first place.

The free hot river now has a front door

The most visible change on Route 142 sits directly across from the Tabacón entrance, on the bank of Río Chollín. This is the same public thermal river long known locally as El Choyín, fed by the same water that supplies Tabacón, roughly 12 to 13 kilometers from town at the bridge on the way to Arenal Volcano National Park.

In 2025 a new dual restaurant-and-reception establishment called Choyín Río Termal opened on that bank. The free public section of the river remains free. You still walk through the same small gate, follow the same short gravel path down to the water, and pick your way across the same slippery rocks to reach the pool where volcano-heated water mixes with cooler stream water on the far side. What has changed is that lockers, towels, food, and secure parking are now available on-site through a day pass, instead of requiring a resort ticket across the road.

For anyone who has spent an afternoon at El Choyín negotiating with the unofficial parking attendants who demand around 5,000 CRC to watch a car on the shoulder, the arithmetic is new. The public river remains the local price. The building next to it exists for the visitor who does not want to hike back up in a wet suit and cannot leave a wallet in a locked car on the road. It is a small change with a large consequence: the corridor is no longer strictly a series of walled resorts and one unregulated pull-off.

A note for residents who still prefer the free stretch. The firefly window along the trail is short. They appear in the bushes and along the earliest section of the river during the first hour after sunset, which is unfortunately also when the crowd peaks. Early morning, before eight, remains the quiet visit.

A downtown that finally holds you after dark

Central La Fortuna is small. Eight square blocks of commerce arranged around the church and central park, with the bus stop on the southeast corner and everything else within a two-minute walk. For years the working assumption was that dinner meant either a soda on the plaza or a drive out to a hotel restaurant on the volcano road. Neither served the resident who wanted a real evening in town.

Mercadito Arenal, near the National Bank and central park, has become the practical answer. It functions as a gourmet food court under one roof, with counters serving tacos, sushi, burgers, and wood-fired pizza, and a bar called Voodoo Mixology known for cocktails served with dry ice. It runs noon to ten most days and closes Tuesdays. What it replaces in daily life is the assumption that a shared table with friends who cannot agree on cuisine has to happen at somebody's house.

The rest of the downtown map has filled in around it. A short read of who does what:

None of these are new to anyone who has lived here a decade. The interesting fact is that they now cluster tightly enough that a resident planning an evening out no longer has to build the night around a car.

What the resort road looks like when you actually live here

Route 142 and its offshoots keep a different set of restaurants, ones worth the drive because the drive is part of the point. Three are worth naming separately, because they anchor different kinds of nights.

Essence Arenal sits outside downtown at the base of Arenal Volcano National Park, roughly 35 minutes from the plaza, with views of Lake Arenal. The menu is plant-forward and allergy-friendly, with symbols marking vegetarian and gluten-sensitive dishes. It is the restaurant you pick when a guest has dietary restrictions and you refuse to apologize for the meal.

SelvaRustica is the modern Costa Rican dinner most often mentioned for anniversaries and honeymoons, grilled meats and seasonal specials in a wood-and-jungle room. It is a reservation spot rather than a walk-in.

Arenal Puesta del Sol caps at 15 guests. The kitchen sources partly from its own garden, offers vegan, celiac, and vegetarian menus alongside Gallo Pinto and ribeye, and runs private cooking classes that include tortilla-making and a tasting of sugar-cane derivatives in a dedicated area of the restaurant called El Trapiche. If you have out-of-town family and want to spend three hours at one table, this is the room.

The through-line of these three: they are not competing with the resort buffets. They are the alternative for the resident who is tired of resort buffets.

The community calendar worth clearing space for

Two dates and one departure sit on the local calendar this season.

September 15 to 17. Fiesta de la Yegüita overlaps with Día de la Independencia on September 15. Streets fill. Parades run. This weekend is the one visiting family should be pointed toward if they want to see the town as itself rather than as a staging area for hikes.

October 7 to 13. Banda Comunal La Fortuna travels to Mairiporã, in the state of São Paulo, to compete in the Imagination Marching Concepts event, with performances scheduled for October 9, 10, and 11 and the possibility of additional concerts in the city of São Paulo. This is, according to reporting on the tour, the first time a Costa Rican marching band competes at this event on Brazilian soil.

The band itself is worth knowing about if you have moved to the area recently and do not have context for the parades you have been watching. Banda Comunal La Fortuna was founded on May 1, 2010, is registered with the Ministry of Culture and Youth through the Sistema de Información Cultural (Sicultura), and now runs to around 220 young musicians and dancers across wind, percussion, and visual sections. It is a regular at the Festival de la Luz in San José and at Expo Arenal. For a town of La Fortuna's size to send 220 performers to a marching competition in Brazil is a meaningful export.

What this all adds up to

Read the three shifts together and the shape of the season becomes clear. A river corridor that used to be resorts-only picked up a public-facing service building. A downtown that used to empty out at dusk picked up a food court that operates like a shared living room. A community whose cultural output used to stay inside the canton is now boarding a plane to São Paulo.

None of these are transformative individually. Together they describe a town filling in with the kind of everyday infrastructure that makes a place livable rather than merely visitable. For anyone already here, they mean fewer trips to San Ramón or San José for the small things. For anyone weighing where in the Northern Zone to spend the next chapter of a life, they are worth watching, because towns that acquire this shape rarely lose it.

The volcano is still the reason the region exists on the map. The season's news is that the town at its foot is getting better at being a town.

If you own property around La Fortuna, Nuevo Arenal, or the wider Northern Zone and want a considered read on how the area is changing, or if you are quietly weighing a purchase and would prefer a conversation before you shortlist, Luxury Living Costa Rica advises quietly and at length. Reach out when the timing is right for you.