This was the only guided tour I took in Costa Rica, although I would definitely budget for more next time. I joined up with some Canadiens I met on SkyTrek. It's not THAT easy getting to and from Monteverde Preserve without a planned tour. The Pension offers the hike for $17 (including transportation) at 5:30pm, which supposedly is a better time for spotting wildlife. However, with all the rain, it seemed like it didn't really make a difference, so I chose to do the later tour independently with people I'd met doing SkyTrek. For the late tour, we were told to simply show up at the entrance before 7:30pm.

I ended up meeting the Canadiens at their hotel, where they called a taxi—the cost was 3000 colones for the car. We picked up the other American we'd met on SkyTrek at his hotel, far out of town closer to the preserve. Then in the nonstop rain, we waited in the pitch black at Monteverde's visitors center, basically hoping a guide would appear!

Eventually one did, told us that we'd be leaving as soon as the groups arrived. When the other people appeared in vans I kind of felt like...we'd done something the hard way and probably didn't save enough money. We didn't even know yet how we were getting home.

The tour costs $13 (exact change, please). In the dark (spooky!), there was no way we could see any wildlife without a guide. Of course, since this was during the week of non-stop rain, there really were no mammals or birds to see, but our wonderful bilingual guide Juan Carlos was able to find really bizarre insects for us, as well as tiny, colorful sleeping frogs and lizards.

I didn't have my own flashlight but luckily Juan Carlos had an extra. My eyes definitely never got used to that level of darkness, so it could have been dangerous without one. As usual I was outfitted in my Kmart jacket...the rain never stopped! The night tour was fun, educational, and definitely a bit scary.

Back at the visitors center, we watched the tour vans leave, and realized we were kind of stuck. We had been expecting a pick-up from our first driver but as he didn't speak English, he may have been unaware of that arrangement. We basically wheedled Juan Carlos into calling him back for us. Since we probably ended up paying $2 each for the round-trip taxi on our own and still had to join another group on arrival, I don't think it's really worth trying to do this tour independently.

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