ACTIVITIES IN SAN JOSE'
La Finca de Mariposas (Butterfly Farm), San Joaquín de Flores.  The largest butterfly farm in Costa Rica.  The tour begins with an educational lecture about the butterflies and the botanical gardens at the Farm.  After the lecture you are free to roam the Farm as you like.  Average time spent there is 1 - 2 hours.

Finca de Doña Marta, San Joaquín de Flores
Doña Marta lives in a house decorated in the antigua style of Costa Rica. She provides a guided tour of her home where she explains the typical customs of former generations and shows her wood and leather art work.

Zoo Ave, La Garita
This zoo nurses wounded animals (primarily birds and monkeys) back to health as well as houses and educates wild animals, previously pets, to reenter their natural habitat.

Craft Market, Curridabat
In November 1995 a new international market of arts and crafts opened in Curridabat.  The features more than 122 stands of arts, crafts and typical Costa Rican and Latin American food.  There is live entertainment which includes mariachis, international music concerts, puppet shows and folkloric dance.  Crafts include Costa Rican feather and ceramic masks, silver jewelry from Colombia, Nicaraguan crafts, Mexican furniture and porcelain, antiques, hand woven straw baskets and hats made by the Bri Bri indians, Honduran trunks and chests of all sizes, stained glass lamps, plus other crafts from Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama.  The market houses a typical Costa Rican restaurant, a seafood restaurant and an Argentinean steak grill.

CONAPA Paper Factory, San Joaquín de Flores
Located right around the corner from C.P.I., Conapa sells banana paper products.  These are great souvenirs for loved ones and friends back home.

ACTIVITIES IN MONTEVERDE
Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve
The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, known as one of the most outstanding wildlife sanctuaries in the New World tropics, is only about an hour walk from C.P.I.  Positioned atop the Continental Divide, the Reserve extends down both the Caribbean and Pacific slopes.  This creates temperature and humidity gradients, which change dramatically over relatively short distance with eight different ecological life zones. Inhabitants include over 100 species of mammals, more than 400 species of birds, over 120 species of amphibians and reptiles, an estimated 2,500 plant species and insect species probably numbering in the tens of thousands.  At present the biological reserve includes approximately 10,500 hectares.

Bajo de Tigre Trail
In 1987, a group of Swedish children troubled by the worldwide loss of rain forests, raised money and sent it to the Monteverde Conservation League to buy and protect threatened forest near Monteverde that they had heard about from a visiting biologist.  Children have collected aluminum cans and glass, baked cookies for sale with rain forest ingredients (ginger, chocolate, vanilla) or asked for a parcel of rainforest as a Christmas or birthday gift.  One-fifth of every donation goes into an endowment fund for protection and maintenance of the forest. Soon that vision was shared by children in England, the United States, Germany and Japan.  More groups organized, and the dream of the first international children's rain forest became reality.  It is called Bosque Eterno de los Niños.

EL Jardín de las Mariposas
Founded by North-American biologist, Jim Wolfe, the garden features a nature center, three gardens, a 450-square-meter netted flyway, and two greenhouses, one representing lowland forest habitat, the second set up as a mid-elevation forest understory, darker and more moist than the first. Together, they are filled with hundreds of tropical butterfly species.

Serpentario
Here you can identify a variety of snakes that live in the area, along with lizards, turtles, and spiders.

Monteverde Orchid Investigation Project
The orchid garden is a network of short paths exhibiting over 400 species of orchids, all native to the region, including what is thought to be the world's smallest flower.  At any time of the year there a minimum of 40 species are in bloom, but there can be as many 120 species blossoming at one time.

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