Rio Celeste Waterfall Hike: the Bright Blue Waterfall in Costa Rica

Tucked within the Tenorio National Park is where you’ll find Costa Rica’s bright blue waterfall: the Rio Celeste Waterfall. Known for its milky blue color, this waterfall is a popular attraction to see when traveling through Costa Rica. While Costa Rica is filled with amazing waterfalls (check out Rio Agrio, La Fortuna Waterfall or the La Paz Waterfall Gardens!), the color of Rio Celeste is what sets it apart.

The blue color of the water at the base of Rio Celeste is said to occur because of an optical phenomenon and not because of a chemical reaction. Essentially, the rocks at the bottom are coated with substances that absorb all colors from sunlight except blue. You can read a better explanation here.

Is it really that blue? Yes! But the color of the water can definitely be more or less blue depending on the weather. You’ll want to make sure it hasn’t been down pouring lately before you visit.

It’s located on the north side of the Tenorio Volcano National Park, so you’ll also want to make sure you are driving to the right entrance of the park. Tenorio is a dormant volcano surrounded by cloud and rainforests, though the Rio Celeste Waterfall is definitely one of the highlights of the park.

Getting to the Rio Celeste Waterfall

From La Fortuna:

The Rio Celeste Waterfall is located within Tenorio Volcano National Park which is about a 1.5 hour drive northwest of La Fortuna. The best way to get to Rio Celeste is by renting a car. It’s an easy drive with paved roads all the way to the entrance.

There are no direct bus lines from La Fortuna, so you’d have to connect along the way in San Rafael de Guatuso. However, there are lots of shuttle services and tours available from La Fortuna.

From Liberia:

If you’re coming from Liberia, the drive is a little under 1.5 hours where you’ll be driving southeast and then north to Tenorio.

Parking:

There’s a parking lot for Rio Celeste right across from the entrance. Parking is an additional $5 which can be paid in cash. The entrance to buy tickets is right across the road.

When to Go:

Time of Day: A lot of the trail is shaded, so it’s not a big concern if you go in the middle of the day. However, the Rio Celeste waterfall is a big attraction for tour groups. If you want to go when it’s a bit quieter, I’d try and avoid when the tours go.

We went right after lunch time (around 1pm) and it happened to be when several tours were there. Not usually a big deal, but we had a pretty unpleasant experience being on the trail with them at the same time (more on that later).

Now, I can only guess what times the tours arrive but since it’s a little further away, I would assume they would be arriving in the late morning and early afternoon. So I would think early in the morning would be quieter or later in the afternoon.

Season: Rainy season in Costa Rica can throw a wrench in your plans real quick. The rainy season runs from May to November and the general consensus is that if you visit during that time, the water won’t be as blue and might even be brown. However, we went to Costa Rica in August and it was still really blue.

Cost + Hours

Depending on how many people are there, you may need to wait outside of the entrance for a bit. Evidently there is a limit to how many people can visit at a time. We were told to wait before being allowed up to the ticket building, but weren’t told why. We only ended up waiting for about 15 minutes.

Tickets to the Rio Celeste waterfall are $12 for adults and need to be purchased in person with a card. They do not accept cash.

The park is open from 8:00am to 4:00pm but you have to be on the trail by 2:00pm. And you may want to show up early in case they hit their limit on visitors.

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Exploring Rio Celeste

Once inside the park, the main trail is pretty mild. It’s mostly gravel and relatively flat throughout. The walk through this section goes by pretty quickly and leads to the waterfall and the fork to the other trail.

The Rio Celeste Waterfall

Once you reach the entrance to the waterfall, you can head down the stairs to the blue falls or take the fork in the trail to the rest of the points of interest.

Hiking to the Rio Celeste waterfall takes about 30 minutes and then down about 250 stairs to reach the lowest viewing platform. Most of the hike isn’t hard as it’s mostly flat until you reach the stairs down.

While you can’t swim at the Rio Celeste waterfall, you can walk down to the viewing platform near the bottom of the basin.

When we first started on the stairs down, there ended up being a huge crowd of people that seemed to come out of nowhere. We ended up getting there at the same time as several tours which crowded the stairs quite a bit. But if you wait it out, they’ll eventually head back up and it’s a bit quieter.

The stairs zigzag back and forth which provides a great vantage point along the stairs. And you don’t have to walk down all the stairs and back up if you don’t want to. You can still view the beauty of the waterfall near the top.

Mirador

Near the entrance to the waterfall is a sign and another trail you can take. It was 500 meters to the mirador (viewpoint) so we decided to take it and see where it led. I assumed it would give us a bird’s eye view of the waterfall, but it did not. The view opens up over the forest.

While most of the trail up until that point is relatively flat, the trail to the mirador is not. It’s an uphill trek over large boulders and we were a little unprepared for it. The hike kept going up and up and eventually back down to the next stop.

Laguna Azul

The Laguna Azul (blue pool) is a further 150 meters from the viewpoint, (650m from the sign). We had already hiked that far so we decided to keep going. We had gone up a pretty steep incline for the viewpoint and then a pretty steep decline to get to the pool.

At the bottom of the incline is a small lookout area over a section of blue water. When we got there, we had a bit of a ‘this is it?’ reaction, since we’d just scaled boulder-like stairs to get there and were dripping in sweat. We stayed there for approximately 10 seconds before moving on.

Borbollones

A further 50 meters away is where you can see the water bubbling up due to sulfuric gases from the nearby volcano. It’s a quick walk from the blue pools, so if you do the first one, you might as well do the second one.

I’m not sure we would have quite known what we were looking at had a guide not shown up behind us. He was guiding a couple and pointing out the different spots in the water that were bubbling. Otherwise, we would have had no idea what ‘Borbollones’ meant and no idea what to look for.

Teñideros

From the ‘Borbollones’ spot, the trail continues even further to Teñideros–where the two rivers meet. It’s a further 300 meters along the trail (1000m from the waterfall entrance) and here is where we bailed. We actually did this trail before even going to the waterfall and knowing what the waterfall looked like from photos online, this part of the trail was pretty underwhelming.

However, Teñideros is where you can see a clear divide of where the blue part of the river meets the brown part of the river. The trail also has some bridges over the blue part of the river that make for great photos. If I had known that, I would have taken the rest of the trail all the way.

Worth it to take the trail all the way to the end? Up for debate. The trail does take you straight up and straight down to get to the blue pool and then you have to do it all again to return. I think the most worthwhile part would have probably been the part we skipped, so it’s hard for me to say.

Otherwise, compared to the waterfall, it’s not as impressive and harder to get to. If you do decide to do this section, keep in mind it is not paved and more likely to be muddy if it has recently rained.

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What to Bring

The hike to the Rio Celeste waterfall is pretty easy and you can go down as many stairs as you want (or don’t want). If you only do the waterfall, you can get away with not bringing much. To the waterfall, the trail is mostly flat with stairs at the end.

The part that is more strenuous is to the pools. That section is more rocky and consists of dirt paths, so you’ll want to have good shoes on if you plan on doing both. Otherwise, make sure you have a water bottle and a raincoat if it’s in the rainy season. There’s also a good amount of shade on the trail from the trees.

Things to Know

1. The blue color of the falls can vary depending on the weather. Lots of rain can muddy the water and instead of the blue color, you’ll get a washed out blue or even brown color. We really lucked out since we visited in the middle of rainy season.
2. There are restrooms at the station where you purchase tickets, but beyond that, there are no facilities available.
3. Make sure you have cash for parking and a credit/debit card for tickets!

Taking a Tour

I have to say that our experience with the tours who were also there was not great.

At one point, we were taking a picture on the stairs at the waterfall when a guide told us to move because he wanted to take pictures of his group there. (The group had already gone on down the stairs and weren’t even in the area.)

We told him we were just taking a quick photo and would probably be done by the time he even got his group back up the stairs. But instead, he pushed his back against us while calling for his group to come back and physically pushed us out of the way and into people who were just coming down the stairs. Then he blocked the stairs and the path and proceeded to take pictures of each of the 30 people in his group where we had just been standing.

So just seeing that, I don’t think it would have been very enjoyable to be on a tour like that. They also didn’t allow the people on the tour to go all the way down the stairs. They got far enough down to take a picture and then were herded right back up to continue on. So I would recommend having your own car or taking a shuttle service so you can hike and explore on your own time.

Is it worth visiting?

It depends on how you look at it. Rio Celeste is arguably one of the most beautiful waterfalls in Costa Rica, but it is out of the way to get to. It’s definitely a stunning spot, but after hiking to the other part of the trail and being a little underwhelmed, we weren’t entirely sure it was worth going out of our way to visit only the waterfall.

I think if we had other things to see in that area, it wouldn’t have been up for debate because of how pretty the waterfall is. Next time, I’d probably try and find some other things nearby to see on the trip out there.

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