Turubari Forest Canopy Park

We went as a full family to a Forest canopy tour, I was expecting the world for the $40 entrance fee as this is incredibly expensive for Costa Rica. This included the cable canopy rides for the kids, I dont bother with rides as I am a miserable old fart already and only go for the scenery and wildlife as it was meant to have some wildlife attractions. It took about 90 minutes driving which is a long way for here along crazy hairpin roads. We ended up in a really remote area and turned into a fancy entrance and were met at the reception like visiting presidents, not surprising the amount of money we were spending, we actually had a private guide to take us around the park, which was OK but she was boring and knew nothing about the birds, we found not forest but forested gardens, totally different, it was a glorified garden, a little disappointing but not unexpected, this country was stripped of its trees maybe 100 years ago for cattle ranches and only in the last 30 years when farming went bust have the trees come back. The animals they spoke of were in miserable cages, they had a iguana breeding cage with far too many iguanas in it, like 50 in a compound for 5, it looked bad and i felt bad for the Igaunas, we then found the crocodiles, they were better but in pretty useless compound to view and probably useless for breeding at least the iguanas were in a breeding program. The bird life was better, they had a few large trees that were the food tree for scarlet Macaws, so they had several of these rare birds there, amazing to look at but that was about it apart from a tame pet Toucan.
The canopy cable rides the kids loved it maybe for them the trip was OK but for me it was a total rip off, This park is designed for foreign tourists who have never been in a rain forest or any type of jungle, this is aimed at American tourists who come down on the cruise ships and want to see the "Jungle"

Addendum
There was a Butterfly house which did have some beautiful specimens in it but there were only 4 or 5 species, which is not what you want out of a butterfly house, pretty miserable really, the place was huge so could have had many many more species, just a cheapo exhibit not what you expect for $40 each

Monarch





The Little Tinker getting ready for the Canopy Ride





The Little Tinker Almost Crying on the first ride but she really enjoyed it




The Tame Toucan, fantastically beautiful, very unusual




The Very Rare Scarlet Macaw





The Beautiful amazing Violacious Trogon, what a name