It's four hours, including a boat trip across Lake Arenal, to Monteverde, a tiny community founded in 1951 by North American Quakers who bought land for dairy farming and cheese production. In 1972 they bought 2000 more hectares which became the Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde (Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve). The town is full of tourists.
As I have full day of walking and zip lining through the cloud forest tomorrow, I decide to take a look around the dusty hilly town. The roads are rough, little more than dust trucks, and the buildings a bit sorry-looking. I hear offhand that the locals have no interest in fixing the place up as it's always been like that, and tourists will continue to visit.
In addition to the cloud forest, there's a butterfly farm, an orchid garden, a serpentarium, a frog pond and a cheese factory.
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