Night Walk Santamaria´s — Hotel in Monteverde

Perfect place to do a night tour...much cheaper entrance fee than one of the big forests and there was plenty to see. I was hesitant to do a day tour and night one too, but it was such a different experience and I really enjoyed it. We got to explore using flashlights and got to see lots of activity that we didn't see during a day tour, including two sloths and a viper. I recommend using a guide who has a spotting scope and binoculars. We were able to get good pictures and videos through the spotting scope which was really nice. Make sure to bring a rain jacket and comfortable hiking or athletic shoes.

My husband and I got a private tour which was a little more expensive than a group tour and it was well worth it. We used Roy and were very pleased with our experience and booked this night tour after we met him at the day tour for the Monteverde Cloud Forest. You can search for "Roy the local nature guide" on TripAdvisor. You can also read my detailed review on there titled, "Sloths, Birds, and Vipers, Oh My!" He has not been on TripAdvisor for long so he doesn't have many reviews but he has been a guide for 12+ years and speaks...

I booked this trip to spot snakes, and there happened to be a small boa constrictor on the parking (just before the actual start of the tour). One of the guides picked it up and put it in a tree after which it escaped quite quickly… which was a pity because I could take only a few shots of it. Understandably, they don’t want to touch or handle the animals unless necessary for safety. We walked through quite dense banana-trees and other bushes/trees. Not like cloud/rainforest. The main goal for me was the green palmviper which we found!!! Very lucky that it was close to the ground, later on the ground, and slow-moving so I could take 100 pictures of it 😍👍. Top-moment of this vacation. Further we found some sleeping motmots (nice birds, but less interesting because they cover their head while sleeping ), a scorpion, and a tarantula deep in its burrowing. So if you want to see the viper, you have good chances with this tour (it has a good probability overal for this species according to reviews ). For other animals I’m not so sure. For me this was definitely 5 stars, for other people...

Many people talk about the night tours at Monteverde. This isn’t the place. It feels like you are in the backyard of someone’s home. Often you hear the cars passing by. The backyard is very crowded, many groups are walking here in low season.

If we talk about the animals; we didn’t find many. We feel like the other groups also didn’t, because when a group found something the guides would tell it on the radio so all the groups could come and take a look.

Sadly we got the feeling our guide did his time in the backyard with us and that was it. He knew how to explain the animals in English but when we had questions tje answers didn’t satisfy..

Kudos to the animals that actually live here. 2 must be hard when it is this crowded every night.

All in all: not worth the money. Would recommend if it was half the price or...