Showing 1-10 of 10 results
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Café Monteverde
Coffee lovers will be excited to find some of the world's finest coffee here at Café Monteverde, where you can sample their six roasts for free. Better yet, make advance reservations for a tour of their coffee fincas (plantations), which use entirely organic methods to build the perfect brew. Afterwards, you'll be taken to the beneficio (coffee mill) where you can watch as the beans are washed and dried, and then brought to the roaster.
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El Jardín de las Mariposas
Admission to the Butterfly Garden entitles you to a guided, naturalist-led tour (in Spanish, English or German) that begins with a discussion of butterfly life cycles and the butterfly's importance in nature. Visitors are taken into the greenhouses and to the screened garden, where hundreds of species flutter. It's best to visit in the morning when the butterflies are most active.
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Monteverde Cheese Factory
Until the recent upswing in ecotourism, Monteverde's number one employer was this cheese factory, also called La Fábrica (the Factory) or La Lechería (the Dairy). Reservations are required for the two-hour tour of operations, where you'll see old-school methods used to produce everything from a creamy gouda to a very nice sharp, white cheddar, as well as other dairy products such as yogurt and, most importantly, ice cream.
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Mundo de los Insectos
Sure, World of Insects has butterflies, but there are probably more mariposarios in this country than canopy tours. What makes this place special is the collection of creepier cloud-forest critters, from hermaphroditic walking sticks to notoriously venomous banana spiders. The yuck factor is high, particularly when viewing hordes of water cockroaches, scorpions and various arachnids.
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Ranario
With all this mist, it's no wonder that so many amphibians call Monteverde home, and the Frog Pond has about 30 species on display, including newts, salamanders and - of course - a wide assortment of frogs and toads. Guides lead tours through the well-maintained terrariums, and point out the often poisonous frogs with flashlights.
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Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde
This beautiful reserve came into being in 1972, when the Quaker community, spurred on by the threat of encroaching squatters, joined forces with environmental and wildlife organizations to purchase and protect an extra 328 hectares (811 acres) of land. This fragile enviroment relies almost entirely on public donations to survive. Today, the reserve totals 10,500 hectares (25,946 acres).
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Reserva Santa Elena
Though Monteverde Reserve gets all the attention, this exquisitely misty entry, at a comparably small 310 hectares (766 acres), has plenty to recommend it. While the Monteverde Reserve attracts almost 200,000 visitors annually, Santa Elena sees fewer than 20,000. It's also a bit cheaper and much less developed, plus your entry fee is helping support another unique project.
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Selvatura
The makers of eco-fun really went all out at Selvatura, a huge eco-complex complete with butterfly and hummingbird gardens, a canopy tour and a series of hanging bridges. The star attraction, however, is the slightly overwhelming Jewels of the Rain Forest exhibition, a mind-boggling collection of the strangest and most stunning insects you've ever seen.
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Serpentarium
Biologist Fernando Valverde has collected about 40 species of snakes, plus a fair number of frogs, lizards, turtles and other cold-blooded cuties at his serpentarium. Sometimes it's tough to find them in their foliage-filled cages, but guides are available in Spanish or English for free tours; signage is similarly bilingual. The venomous snake displays are awesome: you'll even get to see your first (and hopefully last) fer-de-lance.
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Valle Escondido
Valle Escondido (Hidden Valley Trail) begins behind the Pensión Monteverde Inn and slowly winds its way through a deep canyon into an 11- hectare (27-acre) reserve. In comparison with the more popular reserves, Valle Escondido is quiet during the day and relatively under-touristed, so it's a good trail for wildlife watching. The two-hour guided night tour is very popular, so make your reservations in advance.
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Showing 1-10 of 10 results
