Is Monteverde worth it?

Monteverde is sold as one of the great experiences in Costa Rica. I walked the hanging bridges expecting to be
moved, and what I got was a nice walk in a wet forest.

I want to be precise, because this is not a complaint about the place. The cloud forest is genuinely lovely: high,
cool, permanently damp, hung with moss, with ridges of green running away into haze in every direction. The bridges
take you out into the canopy at a level you would never otherwise reach. On a clear afternoon the views from the roads
above are some of the best in the country. None of that is in question.

What I am questioning is the gap between how it is sold and what it is. This is advertised as an extraordinary
experience, and it is an ordinary one, done well. If you have spent time in serious mountains the walking will not
register as walking at all – there is no challenge in it – and if you arrive expecting revelation you will spend the
whole time waiting for the thing to start. I did, and it did not.

The other cost is the getting there. On a map the drive from the volcano country looks like nothing. In practice it is
hours of climbing on steep and partly unpaved road, and you pay for the cloud forest twice: once at the gate and once
in the day it eats.

So who should go? If you have never been in a cloud forest, go – it is a distinct kind of place and worth seeing once.
If you want the canopy without the walk, the aerial options do that honestly. And if you are cutting your itinerary
down, this is one of the first things I would cut, and I would put the day into the volcano country instead.