Entrance to Monteverde Reserve — Local services in Monteverde

Beautiful park, with lots of gorgeous birds and animals to see. I'd recommend getting a tour guide who can use their scope to see the birds and animals close up, since they all live high in the trees. They also work very hard to help you find a quetzal, which are gorgeous and so hard to find on your own! It gets SUPER busy - so either make a reservation ahead of time, or get there at 645am before they open (which is at 7am) to get an entrance ticket. They only allow a certain number of visitors per day, and they do run out of tickets. It also takes a long time to get a ticket, as they need to take down a lot of information from each guest. Parking is challenging, either there's a parking lot 1km down the road that you have to pay for and use a shuttle bus to get to the entrance, or you can drive to the entrance and see if there's a spot on the side of the road (for free). There's only room for maybe a dozen cars, so if you go later there's a chance there's going to be no room to park at the entrance and they may run out of tickets (if you don't already have a reservation). People with a reservation are still required to line up to get their tickets, and those lines are still really slow so make sure you give yourself a lot of time if you have a tour starting at a...

We visited out of high season and parked on the road outside. We walked up and asked for a guide and had to wait less than 5 minutes for one to turn up. We had Roy as our guide and he was EXTREMELY KNOWLEDGEABLE. He was super patient, attentive and understanding. Lovely man with so much information about not just the mammalian species in the cloud forests but the reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds and fauna. We unfortunately didn’t see many mammals (as we visited after a storm) but it was still a 5 star worthy visit. Roy taught us so much and was very honest about the history of the place and the limitations of his knowledge. Once we finished our tour we had complete access to the park so we walked over the bridge and to the plate divide view point which was beautiful. The walls are very easy and accessible and well sign posted so no map reading skills are required. A great morning out for us! We saw tonnes of birds and then got to visit the hummingbird garden for free which was INCREDIBLE to see the beautiful birds up close and to watch them move around so interestingly....

Pros: amazing nature, incredible being IN the clouds, incredible wildlife, beautiful waterfall. Being first in line and getting into the park early meant we were alone the majority of the time on the trails (very easy to get the public bus here and back and it stops right at reception). Trails very well maintained

Cons: only allowing a certain amount of people through at a time (totally understand why this is however it took us two attempts on different days to be able to enter). Massive con was a certain staff member at reception; she was extremely rude to us and other customers both times we tried to buy tickets - it was a massive downfall to the experience being patronised and watching her do it to others repeatedly. Very rude.

Advice: if you can buy tickets online 48 hours beforehand do it and then get to reception before it opens to get in the line. Otherwise if you’re a bit more spontaneous, still get to reception before open to buy a ticket to...