La Fortuna

For most of its history, La Fortuna has been a quiet agricultural town, about 4 miles (6km) from the base of Cerro Arenal (Arenal Hill). In 1968, Arenal erupted violently after nearly 400 years of dormancy and buried the small villages of Pueblo Nuevo, San Luís and Tabacón. Suddenly, tourists from around the world started descending en masse in search of fiery night skies and that inevitable blurry photo of creeping lava. La Fortuna remains one of the top destinations for travelers in Costa Rica, even though the great mountain stopped spewing its molten discharge in 2010.