Poás Volcano, La Paz Waterfall Gardens & Coffee Tour

Overview

Stand at the crater rim of Poás Volcano, walk the trails of La Paz Waterfall Gardens, and learn how Costa Rican coffee is grown, all in one private, hotel-pickup day.

A private full-day tour combining Costa Rica's most requested Central Valley stops. You'll visit an active stratovolcano, a private ecological reserve with waterfalls and a wildlife sanctuary, and a working coffee farm to see how the beans go from plant to cup. Poás's crater is sometimes shrouded in cloud later in the day, so an early departure gives the best chance of a clear view.

Highlights

• Poás Volcano National Park Walk the short paved trail to the lookout over Poás's massive, steaming crater.
• La Paz Waterfall Gardens Explore trails past five waterfalls and a private wildlife sanctuary with monkeys, toucans, and big cats.
• Coffee farm visit See the coffee plant up close and learn how Costa Rican beans are grown, harvested, and roasted.

What Stops Does This Tour Make?

A popular starting point — every Voyzo itinerary is fully customizable, so we'll shape the order and stops around your group.

Important Information

Frequently Asked Questions

About This Tour

Stand at the crater rim of Poás Volcano, walk the trails of La Paz Waterfall Gardens, and learn how Costa Rican coffee is grown, all in one private, hotel-pickup day. A private full-day tour combining Costa Rica's most requested Central Valley stops. You'll visit an active stratovolcano, a private ecological reserve with waterfalls and a wildlife sanctuary, and a working coffee farm to see how the beans go from plant to cup. Poás's crater is sometimes shrouded in cloud later in the day, so an early departure gives the best chance of a clear view.

Poás is one of the most consistently active volcanoes in Costa Rica, and its main crater — about 1.5 kilometers across — is among the largest active craters anywhere in the world. At its base sits Laguna Caliente, a highly acidic crater lake that has been measured at temperatures approaching 85°C and shifts in color from turquoise to a milky gray-green depending on recent activity. Records show at least 40 eruptions since 1828, the great majority of them phreatic explosions caused when magma heats the lake water into sudden bursts of steam.

Because Poás remains genuinely active, access to the national park isn't something that can be guaranteed year-round the way it might be at a dormant site. The park has closed to visitors on short notice during past spikes in activity — including extended closures in 2024 and 2025 when seismic monitors picked up increased unrest — and it reopens only once Costa Rica's National Emergency Commission confirms it's safe. Itineraries here are built with that in mind, and your guide checks current conditions before the day begins.

La Paz Waterfall Gardens opened to the public in the fall of 2000, after construction that began in 1998, and was founded by an American entrepreneur, Lee Banks, who built the park around a series of five waterfalls tumbling through cloud and rainforest — the last and most photographed of which is La Paz Falls itself. Alongside the trails, the park maintains a hummingbird garden with more than two dozen documented species and one of the country's larger wildlife rescue sanctuaries, home to animals confiscated from illegal captivity and placed in the park's care by Costa Rica's environment ministry because they can no longer survive on their own in the wild.

Coffee has shaped this stretch of the Central Valley since the early 1800s, when the government began granting free land to anyone willing to plant it in the region's volcanic soil — soil enriched, in no small part, by centuries of ash fall from volcanoes like Poás and Irazú. Only the arabica variety, introduced from Arabia by Spanish colonists, was permitted to be grown commercially, and it remains the only variety cultivated in Costa Rica today.