A whole village for tourists

From the Costa Rican capital San José I went by bus to Monteverde, where the most visited national park of the country is located. No wonder that this bus was full of tourists. Monteverde is home to a cloud forest, a forest that is almost always covered in clouds or fog in humid weather.

The village itself is also teeming with tourists. And the whole village aimed to make a profit from those tourists. Everywhere souvenir shops, pizza shops or hotels.  It was just summer, that means a lot of Europeans and Americans have summer holidays and Costa Rica is very popular with them. Costa Rica attracts more families and less adventurous travelers than Honduras or Guatemala which are much cheaper though.

Expensive but disappointing cloud forest

The prices in Costa Rica are much higher than in the other Central American countries. The super market prices are even more expensive than in my own country. Equally expensive was the entrance fee for the Monteverde cloud forest, which cost me over 20 $. And what I got for it disappointed me. In my opinion it looks better on pictures than in reality. It felt very artificial and not natural. You walked along perfectly prepared trails and didn't meet a single animal. And also the flora was less exotic than in the deeper rainforest.

When I finished the short 2-3 hour hike I visited a small house nearby where small hummingbirds were flying in to feed. After that I visited another bat house.

For further adventurous activities like ziplining, which are also very popular in this area, I didn't want to spend my money and I left the place again to go to the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica.