lukewilliams459

Jun 10, 20236 min read

Monteverde

Activity Summary

Friday 2nd June - Day 274

Primary cloud forest ziplining - Selvatura Adventure Park
Wildlife night tour - Monteverde Night Tour

Saturday 3rd June - Day 275

Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve
Drive to Manuel Antonio

Summary

Monteverde

What was quite a telling indication of how Costa Rica is not a budget friendly travel place was the board of activities and prices in our hostel. There are plenty of fun activities to do in Monteverde but it ain’t cheap at all.

The zip lining was really good fun and highly recommended - not many places to traverse in primary cloud forest for over a km. The night tour was decent but as with any of these things are contingent on what is seen, the lack of sloth being a disappointment but fortunately we ticked that box in Manuel Antonio.

Monteverde itself seemed quite nice and if we were less frugally inclined could have happily thrown money away in town.

The roads in Monteverde aren’t great but at least they are paved. The roads into and out of Monteverde plus to any activity absolutely suck balls which wasn’t great fun.

Accommodation

Monteverde - Cattleya monteverde

Number of nights - 2

Price per night per person - £8

Perfectly decent hostel with fully stocked kitchen, private room with two single beds and shared bathroom. Parking was half decent (did get a little crowded but manageable) and it was easy to get to all our activities.

Diary

Since Nicola’s first trip to Costa Rica she has consistently dropped the ziplining in Monteverde throughout our relationship, naturally each time starting the brag with ‘this one time in Costa Ricaaaa’ like all good travelling rahrs do. Luke was finally going to get his own way experience soaring through the cloud forest of Monteverde.

There are a number of companies available to choose from, each with slight differences which made the decision a little challenging. Nicola had previously done the extremo one that boasted the longest zip line in Central America which would have been a natural first choice but we ended up going with Selvatura Adventure Park as the course was well received and was based in primary forest. It was a bit more expensive than the others but for the views we were willing to cough up the extra dough.

The road wasn’t great once again to the ziplining start. We checked in for 11am, got kitted up and shuttled up the road to the first line.

In total there were 13 zip lines on varying lengths and required positions. Using a glove to break and stabilise ourselves was pretty unusual for us and made the taking of casual pictures along the course immensely difficult. This in tandem with the guide's constant stress of trying to get everyone through as quickly as possible meant by the time we were clipped onto the platform, they were busy trying to get us moving to the next. It got a fair amount less pressured in the second half but it did make us wonder about the safety of it all, the one man per podium rushing through all these clippings felt like it increased the risk of mishap by quite some margin.

In Luke’s opinion the best zip line was the two runs we could do together. The lines would run for a good long while, both of us seated and Luke’s legs wrapped around Nicola’s waist to keep the two of us locked together. It brought a lot of stability when soaring above the trees, was cute to be doing it together, the views were great and we got some serious pace going. The shunting stop at the end was felt a lot harder by Nicola as the bruises proved.

The views on top of the trees from the platform and then soaring through and above them was absolutely great.

The zip lining was pretty chill but the Tarzan swing was less so. It was only a 15m platform but the step off the metal platform, into thin air and the short free fall delay until the rope catches you was pretty unnerving. Luke made a nice grunting sound as he made it down. The guides stopped everyone by quite viciously grabbing each swinger's legs, Luke asking to at least be bought dinner first before being so aggressively manhandled.

The last zip line was the longest at 1km and one we did together. Great fun.

We had some lunch on some benches near the car park and on finding out the hanging bridges (a weird fascination in this area with suspension bridges as an experience) cost in excess of $40pp for very little walking distance we returned back to the hostel to reassess our rest of day plans.

We were both absolutely pooped so like the toddlers we are, decided it was group nap time, minus the milk and biscuits sadly. The rest of the afternoon was chilling and cooking dinner before heading off out for a wildlife night tour (Monteverde Night Tour) at 8pm.

There were 5 of us in the group, the rest all Americans. Nicola tried having her hand at socialising whereas Luke could not have tried less.

The tour was pretty good fun, wandering around with torches as if we had any hope of spotting any wildlife other than creepy crawlies. The guide was knowledgeable and picked out some decent animals we could look through the telescope through:

Started off with a nice view of the moon

A number of vipers

Frogs

Salamander

Mega ant hive

Kinkajou - very briefly as it was having an argument with another and then ran off

Sleeping toucan

Tarantula

Giant stick insect

On the way back to the hostel at 10pm, there was a collision right by the night tour turn off so we had to divert quite a way around it to get to Monteverde. Our experience of most roads in the area has been questionable at best and this was all done during daylight. Our fears were rewarded when we were presented with the ropeyist road of the trip so far. It was unbelievably steep going down with loose gravel and standard potholes / fault lines that really put our two wheeled drive vehicle to the test. We made it with a fair amount of wheel spin in parts of the uphill but we were lucky as had we needed to travel the other direction along this road, Rico wouldn’t have made it. Luke was pretty pumped with adrenaline by the time we were back.

We were up earlyish so we could see as much as we could of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve before driving the roughly 5 hours to Manuel Antonio. On our way to the reserve we stopped in town for the supermarket and Nicola had somewhat of a rough experience and what would be the epitome of false advertising. A 40% off fruit and veg deal ended up causing Nicola a large amount of stress when the bill came with this unapplied, to then have to go back in store and work out what was going on in Spanish. Turns out she needed to be a member but nowhere in the store was this advertised.

She returned to the car with our £10 discount but utterly deflated and in a terrible mood. The pock marked roads added to the stress as did the confusing car parking situation at the reserve and what blew a hole in the proverbial roof, getting told off for spraying bug spray at the cloud forest entrance. Another travel moment where we both needed some space.

The car parking for the cloud forest was down the road from the reserve, which we had paid for already, it just wasn’t overly clear what the process was. Pretty much like everything Costa Rica does. We didn’t have to wait long until the shuttle came and dropped us off and we began walking around the reserve tracks.

Luke did a 10km loop around the reserve in the 2 hours we were here while Nicola had a nice walk and chat in Spanglish with a park ranger. Much nicer walking temperature in the cloud forest but still mid 20s.

Spider monkeys

Lots of centipedes

Nicola saw a big black snake that took up the length of the path

Luke managed to make it around to some of the further away viewpoints that gave nice window viewpoints of the forest with clouds well and truly rolling in as the day went on