Half Day Tour
Nature
Adults $ 65.00 / Children $ 64.00
The Monteverde Butterfly Garden, or Mariposario, is one of the area’s original and most visited attractions. Situated in Cerro Plano, between the town of Santa Elena and the Monteverde Reserve, the Mariposario offers a biodiversity center, medicinal plant garden, live leaf cutter ant colony, in addition to four climate-controlled butterfly gardens where visitors can observe some of the most beautiful and fascinating insects in the Tropics.
The Monteverde Butterfly Garden believes in hands-on education. The biodiversity center displays a variety of insects and arachnids local to Monteverde, many of them live, allowing visitors and up-close and personal experience, as well as information about breeding, feeding and habitats, live bug cams, and a case for viewing butterflies as they emerge from their chrysalides.
The final, and perhaps most fascinating exhibit, is the Leaf Cutter Ant Colony, displayed under glass allowing visitors to see the ants carrying leaves along a warren of trails to their nest; here they are cultivating a fungus from the decomposing vegetation that they will use to feed on later.
The tour is informative and often very entertaining, actually more like a mini-course in tropical entomology and Costa Rican natural history! As well as learning about butterflies visitors will discover why cockroaches are actually great neighbours and how jewel scarab beetles can distort light waves. There are plenty of opportunities to take detailed photographs of the exhibits.
This tour Includes: A/C Transportation, bilingual Tour Guide
Please wear: comfortable clothes, walking shoes
Please bring: light sweater, camera.
This unique experience combining the sky tram (gondolas) and the Sky Walk (Hanging Bridges) is a "must do" tour you will never forget!.