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Hotel Review: Tabacón Thermal Resort & Spa in La Fortuna, Costa Rica

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As Christmas was essentially cancelled in 2020, Dan and I moved up our planned Costa Rica New Years Eve trip to leave on Christmas day, spending and working a few days in San Jose before moving on to the La Fortuna area, our original NYE destination! You can read about our experience in San Jose here. In La Fortuna, we spent most of our time at the Tabacón Thermal Resort and Spa, which has lovely, amazing thermal pools. This article details our experience at the Tabacón.

Arenal Volcano in La Fortuna, Costa Rica.

For those unfamiliar, La Fortuna is a small, touristy town about a 3 hour drive from San Jose. The centerpiece of La Fortuna is the Arenal volcano, which towers over the town and is quite magnificent on a clear day (which apparently doesn’t happen that often). La Fortuna’s surrounding area also offers lots of adrenaline-fueled jungle activities, including white water rafting, zip lining, and rain forest hikes. However, due to the Arenal Volcano, the area around La Fortuna also has lots of less-adrenaline fueled thermal springs – or water sources naturally heated by the volcano. Since we love a good hot spring, we decided to stay at one of the resorts planned around said hot springs.  We opted for the Tabacón Thermal Resort & Spa because it looked very nice online and is part of the Hyatt hotel network.

THE TABACÓN THERMAL RESORT & SPA

The Tabacón Thermal Resort and Spa is a resort complex located about a 15 minute car ride from downtown La Fortuna.  While you cannot easily walk between the Tabacón and La Fortuna, there is plenty in the Tabacón complex to keep guests busy, from four restaurants, to a lovely pool, a shop, lots of space to walk around, complete with wildlife and perfectly manicured grounds, to the amazing hot springs, and guests will not want for activities to fill the time.  Indeed, guests could stay here for several days without leaving, if that is what you are look for, or simply leave the resort and go into town, making the Tabacón a good choice for may types of travelers.

Welcome to Tabacón Thermal Resort and Spa!

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Our Favorite Meal in Costa Rica: Gallo Rojo, Escazu, Costa Rica

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Whether it was COVID related, that we didn’t know what to order, or that it was the holidays, we did not have the best food on our trip to San Jose and La Fortuna, Costa Rica (someone tell me where to go next time!). But, we did have an absolutely fabulous dinner on my birthday at a restaurant in Escazu called Gallo Rojo, or the Red Rooster.

Gallo Rojo.

Gallo Rojo is a casual eatery with indoor and outdoor seating, although even indoor is “open air” in the Western neighborhood of Escazu. There is parking on site, but we took an Uber from our hotel, the Sheraton San Jose. We had made a reservation in advance via messaging the restaurant on Instagram, one of my favorite ways to make restaurant reservations in foreign countries where I don’t speak the language! Luckily our reservation was all set and we were seated at a lovely table outside.

The menu at Gallo Rojo is a mix of Costa Rican and Asian dishes, and it was all excellent. And before you think that’s really strange, the owner’s father is Costa Rican and his mother is Tiawanese, so he knows both cuisines very well. He also studied in Argentina and Los Angeles and has worked at known restaurants world wide. Its no surprise that this place is good. The food is also shareable, so Dan and I split a few dishes over the course of the evening.

Fried chicken Bao bun.

Now, for the good stuff! Dan and I started our dinner with the house sangria. The sangria was very good and not at all sweet, which is just how we like it.

Birthday Sangria!

Thereafter, we ordered several dishes, our favorites of which were the civiche, the dumplings, and pork belly and fried chicken Bao buns! My very favorite was the fried chicken Bao bun. It was just really, really tasty!

Pork dumplings.

Pork Belly Bao bun.

Ceviche.

Fried Bao bun numero dos.

Our favorite part of the meal, however, was our drive home. Unknown to us, San Jose imposed a 9 PM curfew between Christmas and New Years, during which time Uber cannot operate. Well, we just missed the Uber deadline and taxis were no where to be found. Luckily, the owner drove us home to the Sheraton Escazu! Now that is birthday service!!

STEAL OUR DINNER

ON A BUDGET

While cheaper food can certainly be found in Escazu (and even more so in San Jose proper), Gallo Rojo is quite reasonable.