Costa Rica (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Matthew Firestone [173]
There are also three backcountry shelters (dm US$5), with drinking water, showers, propane stoves and cooking utensils. You need to carry a sleeping bag, candles, food and anything else (like toilet paper) you might need. El Valle (6km, two hours) is the closest; Alemán Hut (8km, four hours) is near a cable car across Río Peñas Blancas; and Eladios Hut (13km, six hours) is the nicest, with separate dorm rooms and a porch. Trails are muddy and challenging, scenery mossy and green, and the tourist hordes that inundate the day hikes a far-off memory. This may be the best way to appreciate the reserve. Reservations are highly recommended, and they can be made at the park office prior to setting out on your hike.
There is a small restaurant (plates ₡1000-2500; 7am-4pm) at the entrance to the reserve, which has a good variety of healthy sandwiches, salads and typical dishes.
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Getting There & Away
Public buses (₡600, 30 minutes) depart the Banco Nacional in Santa Elena at 6:15am, 7:20am, 1:20pm and 3pm. Buses return from the reserve at 6:45am, 11:30am, 2pm and 4pm. You can flag down the buses from anywhere on the road between Santa Elena and the reserve – inquire at your hotel about what time they will pass by. Taxis are also available for around ₡2800.
The 6km walk from Santa Elena is uphill, but lovely – look for paths that run parallel to the road. There are views all along the way, and many visitors remark that some of the best bird-watching is on the final 2km of the road.
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RESERVA SANTA ELENA
Though Monteverde gets all the attention, this exquisitely misty reserve, at 310 hectares just a fraction of the size of that other forest, has plenty to recommend it. You can practically hear the canopy, draped with epiphytes, breathing in humid exhales as water drops on to the leaf litter and mud underfoot. The odd call of the three-wattled bellbird or low crescendo of a howler monkey punctuates the higher-pitched bird chatter and chirps.
While Monteverde Crowd…er…Cloud Forest entertains almost 200,000 visitors annually, Santa Elena sees fewer than 20,000 tourists each year, which means its dewy trails through mysteriously veiled forest are usually far quieter. It’s also a bit cheaper and much less developed; plus your entry fee is helping support another unique project.
This cloud-forest reserve was created in 1989 and opened to the public in March 1992. It was one of the first community-managed conservation projects in the country, and is now managed by the Santa Elena high school board and bears the quite unwieldy official name of Reserva del Bosque Nuboso del Colegio Técnico Profesional de Santa Elena. You can visit the reserve office (2645-5693; 8am-4pm Wed-Fri) at the high school.
The reserve is about 6km northeast of the village of Santa Elena. This cloud forest is slightly higher in elevation than Monteverde, and as some of the forest is secondary growth, there are sunnier places for spotting birds and other animals throughout. There’s a stable population of monkey and sloth, many of which can be seen on the road to the reserve. Unless you’re a trained ecologist, the old-growth forest in Santa Elena will seem fairly similar in appearance to Monteverde, though the lack of cement blocks on the trails means that you’ll have a much more authentic (note: muddy) trekking experience.
This place is moist, and almost all the water comes as fine mist, and more than 25% of all the biomass in the forest are epiphytes – mosses and lichens – for which this place is a humid haven. Though about 10% of species here won’t be found in Monteverde, which is largely on the other side of the continental divide, you can see quetzal here too, as well as Volcán Arenal exploding in the distance – theoretically. Rule No 407 of cloud forests: it’s often cloudy.
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Information
You can visit the reserve (2645-5390, 2645-7107;