The jewel in the crown of cloud forest reserves, Monteverde is generously blessed with bucolic beauty. Its immense popularity has spawned contiguous forest reserves and a gamut of nature attractions that combine with Monteverde’s world-renown to draw tens of thousands of visitors annually.

The heart of things is the village of Santa Elena. There is no village of Monteverde as such. Instead, this community of farmsteads sprawls upon the hillside that rises east of Santa Elena, accessed by paths that branch off the steep dirt road that leads to the cloud forest reserve for which Monteverde is famous.