We went on Sunday to a place near San José called El Iral Cloud Forest and it has more than 15 km of trails, a restaurant with tasty food and picnic tables with simply perfect panoramic views.

How to get there?

Head towards San Isidro de Coronado, then continue towards Las Nubes and then follow the path to Cascajal. In Cascajal there is an intersection where you hold on for about 15 more minutes until you reach Iral.

Waze: https://waze.com/ul/hd1u2f78mt

Distance: up to 15km

Difficulty: Easy – Intermediate

Accessibility: It is not accessible (the restaurant is)

What to bring? Comfortable clothing, waterproof jacket, sweater, trail tennis shoes or boots, sunscreen, repellent, hat, sunglasses, and an excellent attitude.

Vehicle: high clearance vehicles

Parking: Yes

Pets: Yes (with leash)

Camping: Yes

Contact: 8766-1622 (Reservation required, open Friday, Saturday and Sunday)

Cost: ¢6,000 / person

Boys and girls under 12 and older adults do not pay

We arrived at Iral at the top of Coronado around 8 am, where we left the car in a large parking lot in front of the restaurant. After breakfast we got ready to go for a walk through the trails of this beautiful farm.

With perfect weather we started walking along the path that is closest to the parking lot called Bellavista… We started between paddocks and then we entered the forest under perfect shade. Then we went out to a part of grass with beautiful picnic tables from where we could understand why the trail is called Bellavista.

We continued along another trail next to the dairy called Quetzal and we climbed a mountain between paddocks to then enter the forest. The view is spectacular from all angles and it is worth getting up early so that it is clearer.

In the forest we went down quite a bit, we also did a loop on the same Quetzal trail and then we got into another one called Colibrí. In this we passed through other paddocks with hummingbird feeders and we finished the slope passing through a pit to then return to the gravel road that leads to the parking lot.

Since we still had energy left, we went to see the Cajón River waterfall, for this we went down the farm road 900m and followed the signs until we reached the front of the waterfall.

At the waterfall there are more picnic tables and places to sit and rest surrounded by nature. We ate something and then went back to the restaurant and had lunch.

*TRIP DATE: January 2022