Monteverde is a special place. A REALLY special place. The town is tiny and not fancy by any means, but it feels like home. The people are so friendly and welcoming, the food is so fresh, and oh, the views!

As for where to stay, there are a handful of hotels in the region, but I’d highly recommend you check out the Hotel Belmar. It was a little higher price point than we were looking to spend, but we ended up getting great deals on other parts of our trip, so we splurged on the Belmar, and boy was it worth it! Check out more info on the hotel in this post.

There are tons of different activities in Monteverde, but some of our favorites were:

• 100% Aventura Ziplining: we knew we wanted to zipline while we were in Costa Rica, and while there were options to do this in bothArenal and Monteverde, I’m so glad we decided to go while in Monteverde. They have the longest Superman zipline in Latin America, plus a tarzan swing, and tons of other ziplines to try. Note that you do have to use hand-braking for the first few ziplines, but they have a lesson on how to do so prior, and even if you’re like me and can’t get it right, they have people at the end of the line to help slow you down just in case. We felt super safe the entire time we were with them. The cost is $50 per person for 3 hrs, including hotel pick-up and drop-off. We booked through our go-to folks, Anywhere Costa Rica, though I believe you can book directly on their site as well. I’d recommend booking ahead of time and not waiting until you get to the hotel if at all possible as I know spots fill up quickly!

• Finca Madre Tierra: this tour is specially offered by Hotel Belmar as it is the sustainable hotel’s farm. We decided to book this tour from the hotel the morning of, so the cost was a bit higher than we would have liked to have spent on something like this, but it ended up being an incredible afternoon, so the $60 per person was absolutely worth it. We toured the entire property and learned about everything they source for the hotel, such as chicken, eggs, cheese, bananas, sugar cane, and coffee, plus we got to meet all the farm’s pigs and horses, as well as have a Costa Rican drip coffee and snack before heading back to the hotel

• Santa Elena Town: we spent one morning walking around Santa Elena, which was a leisurely half hour walk from our hotel. We stopped at the Orchid Cafe for breakfast and sampled their smoothies and typical Costa Rican breakfast. We toured a local art studio, walked around admiring the street art, and then stopped by Sabor Tico for lunch before returning back to the hotel

• Monteverde Cheese Factory Tour: as a cheese lover, as soon as I heard there was a cheese factory nearby, I knew I had to check it out. Unfortunately we found out about the tour on our last day at lunch, so we could only do the 2pm tour. While we still had a great time and got to sample tons of cheese and learn all about the history of the Monteverde Cheese Factory, we found out that you really only get to watch cheese being made if you do the 9am tour, so I’d recommend trying for that time slot if it’s available. The cost was $12 per person for a 1.5 hour tour

• CASEM: I’d read a bunch about the CASEM women’s art cooperative before we arrived, so I knew I wanted to check it out while we were in town. It was on our walk back from the Cheese Factory, so we stopped in and spent about an hour looking at all of the different arts and crafts for sale. It’s a great place to look for souvenirs if you’re in need of something to bring back home for family and friends!

Have you been to Monteverde? What were your favorite parts of your visit? Anything you’d add to my list above?