Monteagro farm tour is an opportunity to get a personal tour from Francisco Mendez of his farm and coffee plantation. Francisco has been a guide for more than fifteen years, at the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve, on the famous Coffee Tour that he originated, and now here on his own farm. Francisco is an engaging speaker and he is extremely knowledgeable about science. He got a degree in agricultural science from the University of San Jose and he puts all that knowledge to use on the tour. Touring the farm with Francisco you will learn about the dairy farm, take a coffee tour, excellent bird watching have a lesson on how sugar cane is grown and harvested, learn about the medicinal garden and tour his extensive live orchid collection. The nice thing about having Francisco as your guide is if you have a particular interest in any of the above subjects he can spend more time or the entire time focusing on that subject.

The farm is large considering it is pretty close to the down town part of Monteverde. The 16 hectare farm is divided into 8 hectares of pastureland, 8 hectares of forested land (where the shade grown coffee plantation lies) and about an acre of sugar cane and banana fields. You can see the cows at any time of day, but you have to get up pretty early in the morning to see the milking. You can learn about the milking process and how the milk is stored at almost freezing temperatures until it is collected by the Monteverde Cheese Factory. 

After viewing the herd, Francisco will take you on the extensive trails that crisscross his property. While you walk he will name many of the local plants and trees and tell you interesting facts about them. This is also an ecological corridor through which many different kinds of birds pass. It is possible to see Toucans, Parrots and the Blue-crowned Mot-Mot. 

One of the highlights of the tour is the medicinal garden that contains more than a hundred different plants with medicinal uses. Almost every spice that could possibly be used for cooking is present, along with twenty kinds of fruits and many flowering plants. If you tell Francisco of any ailments you might have you might walk away with a local treatment to try.

Orchid collecting is evidently one of Francisco's favorite pastimes. Costa Rica has more orchid diversity than almost any other country on the planet. This collection has more than fifty different kinds of orchids from more than a foot tall to plants the size of your little finger with flowers the size of teardrops.

The tour wraps up with coffee and snacks around a nineteenth century cast iron stove that has been in the family since it was produced. Here you will have an opportunity to ask any questions you may have. Sitting around the family stove you get a real sense of Costa Rican life in the last few centuries and today. This is primarily a farm tour but what better way to get to understand life in a country where, until tourism, almost every family made their living and sustenance from their farm. Still today for a majority of people in Costa Rica who live outside of the cities their life is their farm and their farm is their way of life.