I was up early for breakfast at the lodge so I could be on the bus to the park by 0800. While eating breakfast, a troop of Capuchin Monkeys came down from the trees for their breakfast. I think they’re used to the hostel restaurant cook feeding them some snacks since they were pretty tame and hung around for a while. Really cute little boogers:

My first tour of the day was into the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. I hired a guide for $20 to show me around the park for the next few hours.

My guide Sergio, a really smart guy with a PhD in biology who knows this park incredibly well. He has lived and studied this area for over 20 years.

We spent 4 hours wandering around the park and Sergio provided a lot of good insightful information but unfortunately today was a quite day in the park.. we didn’t see any monkeys, sloths or other big animals. However, we saw lots of birds and interesting plant life.  After checking out the park, we all crammed back into the collectivo and headed back into town.. I think we had about 15 people in this little minivan 😆

I had just enough time to grab a quick lunch and then into a taxi to the finca for an afternoon tour of a coffee/chocolate/sugar farm.

Lots and lots of photos from the farm tour:

I didn’t take many photos of the chocolate part since it was old news to me after doing the choco tour in Guatemala 😆

We got to try a shot of sugarcane moonshine and wow.. that stuff had some kick! It burned all the way down! They distill it here at the farm:

We then saw how they make raw sugar from the sugarcane plants that grow on-site:

Overall, a very busy and informative fun day. It think it’s the most touristy stuff I’ve done in one day.