Santa Elena, Monterverde Costa Rica
October 7-10,2004
We have decided to take a break from boat chores and travel inland on a bus (1000 colonies or about $2.50) for each of us. The bus went up a narrow gravel road with no side rails, needless to say we made it, and took about 3 hours.
Monterverde, according to our Lonely Planet guide of Costa Rica is one of the more interesting places and most popular places to visit in Costa Rica. The name refers to a small but spread out community, founded by North American Quakers in 1951, and to the cloud forest reserve that lies adjacent to the community. The entrance point for this area is the village of Santa Elena, a tico (Costa Rica) settlement that, in response to Montverde’s popularity
is responding to tourism.
The Quakers began dairy farming and cheese production. Early cheese production in 1950’s was about 10kg per day and today with modern production they produce over 1000kg. Per day.
We stayed after recommendation from other cruises at Hotel LasOrquideas. They were a family Danilo and Nidia Oliverio and their son Christian Zamora.
Their e-mail is tresbosques @ rasca.co.cr or www.lasorquideashotelmonteverde.com
They are wonderful people and treat you as family including a great breakfast of the tico beans and rice and eggs etc. Our view from our room was a greenery of forest and waterfalls with lots of birds and monkeys at times in the back yard with a waterfall
The first day we decided to do the original Canopy Tour thru the forest above the tree line. First there was a short-guided hike thru the forest to a series of platforms. The platforms were accessible by various means that is rope ladders, thru the trees and two rappel descents to the ground and whizzing across many
cables Everyone was harnessedby safety equipment and we had two guides for the four of us. It was fun, thrilling unforgettable experience.
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Owl butterfly the largest in Costa Rica
After canopy thrills we went to the Butterfly gardens and even released them in
their greenhouse where butterflies are raised. We went into the screened 
gardens where hundreds of butterflies of many species can be seen. Here we also learned a lot about other insects besides the life cycle of the butterfly. Butterfly (Mariposa) means hope.
We then met at the hotel Joel and his family from s/v Amorita we went to town and had Pizza with them. Costa Rica pizza is like New Jersey thin crust and good.
Joel,Richelle,Kimberly,Nathaniel
The next morning there was cloud forest coverage till about 10 am. We then decided to take another tour in Selvatura Park and walk the bridges.
A trail that crosses the cloud forest on 8 different suspension cable bridges making treetop walkways. They are the longest and strongest suspension bridges in Costa Rica. We were lucky the day was beautiful sunshine for the time we were there. Then we went to the hummingbird gardens to see hundreds 14 different species of beautiful hummingbirds in the natural.
Christian at the B&B helped Rich with the computer and doing pictures so maybe our web page will be more up to date. We had a good evening and ready to catch the 7 am bus back to Punteranous and the Costa Rica Yacht Club to continue our chores of getting the boat ready for passage. We stopped at the Super Mercado for provisions before going back to the hotel for a swim. It was a nice break and Monterverde is definitely a great spot for whether, greenery and fun
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 Clear butterfly |
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