There are two places in the area where you can visit Yellowstone or Rotorua-like geothermal sites. If you like to walk, boiling hot mud springs, sulfur springs, steam vents, and fumaroles are abundant at Las Pilas and Las Hornillas (not to be confused with Las Hornillas on the slopes of volcán Miravalles, near the village of La Fortuna de Bagaces) on the southern slope of the volcano inside the park.

The hike to the craters of Von Seebach and Rincón de la Vieja is rigorous but spectacular. Starting in tropical moist forest, you climb into premontane wet forest where the trees covered with epiphytic vegetation hunch closer to the ground in the harsher climate.

The final ascent is over exposed lava rock, climbing steeply and often in the clouds.

This is one of the hotter drier areas of Costa Rica, and the whole region around Rincón de la Vieja has more predictable seasons than the rest of Costa Rica. The chance of rain is much less during the dry season from December to April, but the higher you climb, the more likely you are to get wet... any time of the year.

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