Arenal Volcano National Park and Arenal 1968: Fees, Hours and Trails

Verified on 26 August 2026, on SINAC’s own English and Spanish pages for Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal, on SINAC’s online reservation portal, and on Arenal 1968’s own live booking engine.

These are two different places with two different owners. The national park — Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal, run by SINAC — charges non-resident adults USD 15 plus IVA, USD 16.95 with tax, and is open daily 08:00 to 16:00. Arenal 1968 is a privately owned park on the 1968 lava flow, and its own booking engine charges USD 28.00 for adult trail admission and USD 16.00 for a child.

The cheaper ticket is the public one, and it is also the only one of the two that publishes how long its trails are. Our La Fortuna and Arenal page prices the rest of what that area charges, and San José to La Fortuna sets out the shuttle times and fares on that route.

Entry fees, side by side

Checked 26 August 2026. SINAC’s English page publishes this park’s fees before tax and its Spanish page publishes the same fees with tax included; the two reconcile exactly at 13% IVA (15 × 1.13 = 16.95).

Arenal 1968’s full published price list

Taken from the operator’s own booking engine, which identifies itself as the Arenal 1968 official booking and services site, on 26 August 2026:

The combined day pass is cheaper than buying its two components separately: USD 28.00 plus USD 80.00 is USD 108.00, against USD 99.00 for the pass — USD 9.00 less, by our arithmetic on the operator’s own published figures.

A conflict, printed both ways. Arenal 1968’s own live booking engine showed USD 28.00 adult and USD 16.00 child on 26 August 2026. A lower adult/child pair is widely repeated in secondary travel writing and contradicts the operator’s own booking system. We are not reproducing those figures: quoting a refuted price, even to refute it, lets a search snippet lift the number out of the correction and present it as ours. The figures above came from Arenal 1968’s own engine on 26 August 2026. The operator’s own system is what this page publishes; the secondary pair is named here only so it is not quietly reintroduced later as though it were current.

Trails

The national park publishes its trail lengths. Arenal 1968 does not.

SINAC’s Spanish park page lists:

Arenal 1968 states that it offers three trails of varying levels of difficulty across the 1968 lava flow, and publishes no distances for any of them.

Booking: the national park is not in SINAC’s online system

Arenal Volcano National Park is not among the protected areas SINAC sells online — on either of the two lists SINAC publishes. The SICORE portal’s own FAQ names 11: Poás, Manuel Antonio, Irazú, Braulio Carrillo (Barva), Tapantí, Tortuguero, Isla San Lucas, Chirripó, Tenorio, Rincón de la Vieja and Carara. SINAC’s separate Compra y Reserva en Línea page names 12 areas requiring an advance online reservation — the same eleven plus Los Quetzales. Both pages leave the difference unexplained, so we are not picking a total; what matters here is that Arenal is on neither. SINAC’s own FAQ states that areas outside the online system are paid at the ticket office by credit or debit card.

That is the practical opposite of Manuel Antonio and of Río Celeste (Tenorio) — two parks on that list of 11 whose own SINAC pages state that tickets are sold online only and no longer at the gate.

Arenal 1968, being private, is outside the SINAC system entirely. Its tickets are sold through its own booking engine rather than through SINAC — two separate gates, two separate operators, two separate fees.

Free-admission days at the national park

24 August — National Parks Day — is free for all visitors, and the third Wednesday of each month is free for residents and nationals only. Both come from SINAC’s FAQ, under decree 16847-MAG-MEP and fee decree 38295-MINAE, and both apply system-wide to SINAC protected areas. Arenal 1968 sits outside SINAC, so neither of those applies to it.

Contact

Arenal 1968: (506) 4001-1968, [email protected].

What the operators don’t publish

These are gaps in their own published information, not ours:

• Arenal 1968’s opening hours and last-entry time. Neither its website nor its booking engine publishes them. Opening and last-entry times for Arenal 1968 circulate in secondary travel writing. They are unverified at the operator, so we are not reproducing them here — for the same reason as the prices above. Arenal 1968 publishes no hours on its own site.
• Arenal 1968’s trail lengths. Three trails, no distances.
• The age range that qualifies for the USD 16.00 Kids trail ticket at Arenal 1968.
• Whether Arenal 1968 charges a different rate for Costa Rican residents. Its booking engine shows no resident rate.
• Arenal Volcano National Park’s Sector Península hours, and whether the same ticket covers it. SINAC describes the sector but publishes neither its hours nor a separate fee.

How we researched this

Scope: this page reports source research, not an on-site test. We checked the booking systems, timetables and official sources named below on the date shown; calculations, unresolved disagreements and information we could not verify are labelled explicitly.

On 26 August 2026 we read SINAC’s English page for Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal, which publishes the pre-tax fees, and its Spanish page, which publishes the tax-inclusive fees, the daily 08:00–16:00 hours for Sector Volcán and the trail lengths. Whether the park is inside or outside the online reservation system, and the free-admission days, come from SINAC’s SICORE portal FAQ. All Arenal 1968 prices come from the operator’s own live booking engine on that date, and its trail count and contact details from its own website.

Where the operator’s own system disagrees with widely repeated secondary figures, we print the operator’s system and name the disagreement rather than smoothing it over.

Last verified: 26 August 2026. Park fees change by decree and operator prices change without notice.

Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — comparisons, percentages, multiples, differences, per-night and per-person conversions, running totals and currency conversions. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it. Where an operator or authority publishes a per-person or per-night rate directly, that is their figure and it is attributed to them at the point it appears.

Sources

• SINAC — Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal (English) — the USD 15 pre-tax non-resident adult fee.
• SINAC — Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal (Spanish) — tax-inclusive fees for non-residents and residents, the child rate, daily 08:00–16:00 hours, and the Heliconias / Coladas / El Ceibo trail lengths and the 1.5 km viewpoint.
• SINAC — Compra y Reserva en Línea — the competing list of 12 reservation-required areas, which adds Los Quetzales.
• SINAC — Sistema de Compra y Reservaciones en Línea (SICORE) — FAQ item 1 for the 11 parks sold online, FAQ item 15 for ticket-office payment at everywhere else, FAQ item 16 for the free-admission days.
• SINAC — Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio — that park’s online-only ticketing, with no gate sales.
• SINAC — Parque Nacional Volcán Tenorio (Río Celeste) — that park’s online-only ticketing, no longer sold physically at the protected area.
• Arenal 1968 official booking site (Orbe Concierge-IBE) — every Arenal 1968 price on this page, including the USD 28.00 adult and USD 16.00 child trail tickets and the USD 99.00 day pass.
• Arenal 1968 — Arenal volcano hiking — the three trails of varying difficulty across the 1968 lava flow.
• Arenal 1968 — Contact us — phone and email.

Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, has no affiliate relationship with any operator named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.