Monteverde was on our list of places to go from the beginning of the trip. It’s a small town in Costa Rica near to several national parks famed for their cloud forests (high altitude rainforest). Chris visited on his travels 21 years ago and was keen to return.
We spent four nights in Monteverde Town, originally we’d planned three but we liked it so much we stayed an extra night! It was a good amount of time to see a lot and get a feel for the place.
To get there from La Fortuna we booked ourselves seats on the ‘jeep-boat-jeep’ transfer. This turns out to be ‘minibus-boat-minibus’ in reality as I suspect the roads have improved from when it was first offered! It was a really nice way to travel, going straight across Lake Arenal it cut down the journey time significantly compared to travelling by road. We ended up sat with Mark, who we’d had dinner with in La Fortuna, so that was nice to catch up again.
When booking hostels it’s always difficult to judge how good something will be, even though we spend time checking reviews and comparing the options. Most of the places in Monteverde in our price range had pretty average to poor reviews so we weren’t expecting much. We were pleasantly surprised by our hostel Coati Place, the owners were really nice and helpful, the room was large and clean with a good ensuite, and the breakfast was different and delicious everyday. This was made even better by being $20 cheaper per night than the place in La Fortuna!
Our first night was one to challenge my fear of spiders! We booked onto a night walk with Kinkajou Tours, who our hostel recommended. Our guide Joaquín was really good, very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. The tour was really busy with lots of groups of eight, all walking in a fairly small area of forest, and to start with I was a bit uncomfortable as we just seemed to be jogging backwards and forwards crowding around torch light, trying to get a fleeting glimpse of animals in the trees. We soon slowed down though and we had a good evening with some amazing finds. Our photos don’t do it justice. We saw several animals including kinkajou (also known as a honey bear, a small rainforest-dwelling mammal), porcupine, and armadillo; some sleeping birds; a green viper; and several impressive bugs. We also came across three tarantulas, including a male, which is unusual to see as they walk around looking for the females who stay in their nest holes. I’m not a big fan of spiders, but these were pretty impressive and I wasn’t too scared even when standing right next to a nest hole whilst the guide encouraged the tarantula to come out!
On the Sunday we took a shuttle bus up to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. There was a slightly confusing process to get into the park (probably made more confusing by us insisting we wanted to speak in Spanish to practice!). We were dropped off at a car park where we paid an entrance fee and were told the park was full. We were given a waiting list number and advised it would be another 1.5 hours before we could enter. When we were sitting in the car park, a yellow American school bus pulled up. I went to check with a car park attendant and it turned out we had to get on this bus to get to the actual park entrance. Once at the park entrance, we checked again and were given a rough entry time for about 40 minutes time. This worked out well as it gave us time to visit a hummingbird garden and buy a couple of small souvenirs.
The park was really impressive, being immersed in the trees and the peace and quiet was amazing. At times on the outer trails we could only hear birds, and were surround by misty forests. We didn’t pay the extra for a guide so we probably didn’t see as much wildlife as others. However, we did keep passing guided tours and the guides were always happy to point out what they had spotted. In our first five minutes we saw a Resplendent Quetzal male and female together, quite far away so our photos are not amazing, but fantastic to see! We were also lucky to see an Orange-bellied Trogon on the path in front of us, no guide needed to spot it! The trails around the park were great, taking you up into the cloud forest and away from the tours. It was so peaceful to be surrounded by vegetation. We ended up spending about five hours walking around.
On our second day we went to Selvatura Park to walk on the hanging bridges, which are large pedestrian suspension bridges hanging over the forest. There are eight bridges in total and it was pretty cool being up in the tree canopy walking over the valleys. It was also quite scary when the bridges wobble! We met a lovely honeymoon couple from Uruguay on the longest bridge and chatted to them and took photos for each other. The entrance costs were pretty high for the bridges, I’m glad we did it but am not sure it’s worth over $50 entry fee!
During our walk at the park we decided we were enjoying our time in Monteverde and would extend by a day. Once back in the town, we headed out dinner. We were just passing reception when we saw Colette (who we met on La Fortuna) checking in. She asked if she could join us for dinner. It’s amazing how these things work sometimes, if we’d left at a different time we wouldn’t have seen her. We then dragged her on a half hour walk, mostly uphill, to Pizzeria Rome, a tiny pizza place. Thankfully it was worth the hike as the pizza was delicious and very authentic, and Colette luckily was happy with it too, even if we did have to try and persuade her we don’t always eat pizza! We ended up sitting around chatting until most of the other customers had gone, then found our way back down the hill in the dark.
On our last day we went walking in the Santa Elena reserve, it is smaller and less touristy than the Monteverde national park. There are about 13km of paths and we managed to cover all of them in about 5 hours, with a refreshing cake stop half way (the most ginormous piece of carrot cake, which was delicious!). This park felt even more magical and remote, we walked for long stretches without seeing anyone else. We spotted three Quetzals in a tree, looking fantastic and much closer than our last sighting. On the trail back there was a lovely little waterfall and pool, where we just sat still for a while whilst dragonflies landed on us.
On our final evening we went for dinner with Colette again, we headed out early as we all had early buses the next day. After passing several restaurants that were either too expensive, or a bit too rough and ready to risk before a long bus journey, we found a happy medium and spent another nice evening chatting.
I really enjoyed staying in Monteverde, it was good to be in the centre and able to walk around the town. The climate was lovely and cool, and walking in the forests was so peaceful and beautiful. Monteverde was the perfect way to end our Costa Rica visit.
Costa Rica was so beautiful and diverse, with welcoming and genuinely friendly people. In almost four weeks there we saw rainforest and cloud forest, Caribbean beaches, mangrove waterways, whitewater rapids, volcanoes, and lots of different wildlife. I’m so pleased we did the Spanish course too, as we got to explore off the tourist trail a bit. The high price of food and tours in the more touristy spots ate into our budget though, while you can get decent budget accommodation for around $15-$25 per person a night, meals out were expensive, and some supermarket products were more than back home (suncream for $25, toothpaste for $8, avocados for $5!). Looking back a month on, we also met some of the best people there, and certainly more travellers of around our age than compared to other countries later on in our trip. This was probably related to the high costs, as backpackers tend to race through Costa Rica, and instead we met more people on holiday. It was a beautiful country to visit and I’d love to come back (maybe with more of a holiday budget, rather than a backpacker budget!).
