Wild La Fortuna: 7 Natural Wonders That Look Like Another Planet!
The Lowdown on the Green Labyrinth
I’ve been tethered to La Fortuna for six months now. Not the “Fortuna” you see on the glossy brochures with the perfectly coiffed infinity pools and the $20 cocktails—I mean the real one. The one that smells like damp earth, diesel, and roasted coffee. When I first rolled in with a backpack that weighed too much and a laptop that I desperately needed to keep dry, I thought I’d stay a week. But this place has a way of swallowing you. It’s a “natural wonder” not just because of the volcano, but because the jungle is actively trying to reclaim the pavement every single day.
If you’re here to “disappear,” you have to stop acting like a guest. You have to stop looking at the volcano every five minutes. The locals—the Fortuneños—don’t. To them, it’s just a giant, sleeping neighbor who might occasionally grumble. To live here as a nomad, you need to understand the rhythm of the rain, the specific hierarchy of the supermarkets, and why you should never, ever trust a sunny morning.
1. The Obsidian Scars of El Novillo
Most people head to the official National Park. Forget that. If you want to see something that looks like the surface of a dead moon, you head toward the back-end of the El Novillo sector. This isn’t a neighborhood so much as a collection of gravel tracks and stubborn houses sitting on the edge of the 1968 lava flow.
Walking through the old lava fields here feels like trekking across a blackened, porous planet. The rock is sharp enough to shred your boots, and the only thing growing are these eerie, neon-green lichens and hardy ferns. It’s silent. No bird calls, just the wind whistling through volcanic glass. I got lost here back in month two. I took a “shortcut” behind a cattle farm and ended up staring at a wall of obsidian. A local farmer, Don Chepe, found me whistling at a hawk and just pointed a weathered finger toward the smoke of a distant brush fire. “That way is the road. This way is for the goats.”
