Monteverde and Santa Elena

The famous Monteverde, known for its cloud forest reserve, is only a small part of a larger area of great tourist attractions. Although Monteverde is the popular namesake by which the entire area is known Santa Elena is where the majority of visitors stay. There are other towns, like La Cruz, that host some of the major tourist attractions that are in neither Monteverde nor Santa Elena.

The community of Monteverde was settled by a group of quakers who evaded the Korean War draft in 1949. Costa Rica, a peaceful country without a standing army, seemed like a great place to continue their pacifist ways. Monteverde also seemed like a great fit, since its altitude offers it a cooler climate for dairy farming. (Gringos melt at lower Costa Rican altitudes. Just ask my dermatologist how many prescriptions he had to write for me)

The principal attraction to the region is its large, well-maintained cloud forest reserve. Some attribute the areas slow, sustainable development success to the poor condition of the roads leading to the Monteverde. It may sound like a joke to most visitors, but many locals fight to keep the entrance to Monteverde a long and arduous one.

The forests of Monteverde are a haven for birdwatchers and nature watchers of all trades. The cloud forests of Monteverde are plum-full of snakes, frogs, monkeys (black howler and capuchin), among more species of birds that you can shake a stick at (the reserve prohibits shaking sticks at animals).

The Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde is a gigantic park with kilometers upon kilometers of trails, but few people ever set foot on all of them. If you're ambitious enough, however, you can spend several days on the trails, camping all the way. You can even make your way east to the Arenal Volcano if you're crazy enough.

Things to do around Monteverde

Monteverde is the best canopy tour destination in all of Costa Rica. Here I recommend the Monteverde Extremo Canopy Tour over the older more established canopy tours in the area, because it is the most intense. This canopy tour has the longest zip-line cables and offers a death-defying tarzan cable that will scare the pants off most daredevils (imagine what it did to a chicken shit like me). The view is amazing on the longer cables. You shoot out over a huge valley, seeing Costa Rican's Pacific coast and —on a clear day—four volcanoes and the Lago Nicaragua.

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