We woke up to the sound of heavy rain, which made us really nervous about our zip lining reservation this morning. We ended up messaging The Original Canopy Tour and they were able to reschedule our reservation to Monday…hopefully it won’t be as rainy, but who knows up here in the rainforest! Since we didn’t have any plans, we took our time waking up and whipped up some homemade breakfast burritos.
Since rain was expected all day, we looked into activities that we could still enjoy with the wet weather…we chose to begin our day at the Monteverde Butterfly Garden! The entrance fee for adults is $15USD, which also includes a pretty informational guided tour. It was so interesting to hear about the different butterfly species, but also about the native plants and other local Costa Rican wildlife that we’ve been seeing throughout our trip here!
We were pretty hungry after roaming around the gardens, so we stopped for lunch at Choco Café, where we had two different, albeit scrumptious sandwiches…chicken and pesto, and steak and onions!
After lunch there was a minor lull in the rain, so we squeezed in a short hike to Ficus La Raiz. The trail is pretty non-descript, but if you put it into Google Maps, you can find the general location of the trailhead. The path can be found just uphill of the curve in the road…you’ll see a little dirt path opening that leads you down to the river. Make sure you stay to the right of the path the whole way down until you get to the river. Once down, you’ll see a large piece of concrete, where you should stay to the right…on the dirt path, not the concrete. You’ll encounter a minor river crossing, and be met with a giant ficus tree that’s been split and has been growing roots on its side…seeming into the river’s falls! We’ve never seen a tree quite like this one, so we spent some time taking pictures and climbing!
After enjoying our time at the ficus tree, we made our way back up the trail, hopped in our car, and went back to our Airbnb to clean up. The trail was pretty muddy, and though the water crossing was refreshing, but it didn’t help our mud situation…especially after all the rain.
After cleaning up and recharging a bit, we wanted to check out a local brewery (Belmar Brewery), which is connected to the Hotel Belmar. The waiter was nice enough to let us try all the beers they had on tap before deciding…too bad they were all pretty great! They also had some really great bar food to accompany their great beer, so we opted for some guacamole and local chips. We even left the brewery with 3 bottles to-go in hand!
After our brewery jaunt, we decided to top it off with a quick bite to eat. The guacamole and chips were actually pretty filling, so we decided to stop at Café Caburé for some small Argentinian plates. We had one of each of their empanadas (cheese with onion, and beef), and shared a chicken mole wrap…everything was muy delicioso!
After filling our tanks, we made our way back to the Airbnb to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we hope the weather will be better so we can explore the famous Monteverde Cloud Forest…stay posted!