North Fields Coffee and Chocolate Farm Tour La Fortuna

North Fields farm at the foot of Arenal Volcano

North Fields is a small family farm on the volcanic slopes outside La Fortuna, where rich black soil, warm days and frequent rain create ideal conditions for coffee, cocoa and sugarcane. The farm is worked organically, without chemical fertilisers or pesticides, and the family who run it guide every visit themselves, which gives the tour a personal feel that larger plantations cannot match. On clear days the cone of Arenal Volcano rises directly behind the fields.

The visit begins in the nursery, where coffee and cocoa seedlings are raised in shade before being planted out, and the guide explains how long each plant takes to bear fruit and how the two crops support each other under the same canopy. Among the many things to do in La Fortuna, a coffee farm tour is one of the few that works in any weather, and because the farm is only minutes from town the whole experience fits into half a morning.

The coffee plantation: from cherry to cup

Walking through the rows of coffee bushes, you learn to spot ripe red cherries, pick a few and taste the sweet pulp around the bean, then follow the beans through the stages that most coffee drinkers never see: pulping, fermenting, washing and drying on the patio in the sun. Costa Rica grows only arabica coffee by law, and the guide explains why altitude, shade and volcanic soil give the beans from this region their character.

The hands-on part comes at the roaster, where you watch green beans turn brown and crackle, then grind them in a traditional hand mill and brew a cup using the cloth filter, the chorreador, found in every Costa Rican kitchen. The coffee you drink is the coffee you just processed, which is the point of an Arenal Volcano coffee plantation visit: understanding the work behind an everyday drink. This section takes roughly 45 minutes.

Cocoa and chocolate making

Cocoa trees grow in the shade of taller trees on the same farm, their pods sprouting straight from the trunk in shades of green, yellow and red. The guide opens a ripe pod so you can taste the white pulp around the beans, then shows how the beans are fermented and dried before roasting. Cocoa was cultivated in Central America long before coffee arrived, and the tour touches on how it was used as a drink and even as currency in pre-Columbian times.

At the chocolate station you roast and shell the beans, grind them into a thick paste and mix it with sugar and spices to make a drink and a simple chocolate to taste, comparing it with the sweeter commercial product most of us know. A La Fortuna chocolate tour is especially popular with children because every step is something they can do themselves, and this one combines it with coffee and sugarcane in a single visit of about 2.5 hours.

Sugarcane press and the farm animals

The last working station is the trapiche, the traditional sugarcane press. Fresh cane is fed through the rollers and the juice runs out, which you taste straight from the press and then see boiled down into the dark unrefined sugar, tapa de dulce, that sweetens coffee and desserts across Costa Rica. The press is turned by hand or by animal power, as it has been on small farms for generations.

Along the way you meet the animals that make the farm's organic cycle possible: cattle and other livestock whose manure fertilises the fields and whose grazing keeps the ground clear between the trees. The visit ends with a sampling of everything you have helped make, fresh coffee, chocolate and sugarcane, with bottled water provided. Families visiting La Fortuna often rate this stop as the children's favourite part of the farm.

La Fortuna and the Arenal area

La Fortuna is the small town at the base of Arenal Volcano in the northern lowlands of Costa Rica, about three hours from the capital, and the main base for exploring the volcano, its hot springs, waterfalls and hanging bridges. The town centre is compact, with a church facing a park and the volcano framed behind it, and most hotels lie along the road towards the volcano, within the 15-minute pickup zone for this tour.

Because the coffee and chocolate tour takes only about 2.5 hours and offers start times from 08:00 to 15:00, it is easy to pair with a morning at the waterfall or an afternoon in the hot springs. Arenal's climate is warm and humid with rain possible in any month, and the farm keeps umbrellas to lend, so the tour goes ahead whatever the weather. The driest months are February to April; the green season from May to November brings lusher plantations and fewer visitors.