Selvatura

Selvatura (tel. 506/2645-5929, www.selvatura.com [1], 7 a.m.–5 p.m. daily), two kilometers north of Sky Walk [2], offers a full day’s worth of things to see and do.

A highlight is a canopy exploration along treetop walkways with three kilometers of suspended bridges ($25 adults, $20 students, $15 children) and via an 18-platform zip-line canopy tour ($45 adults, $35 students, $30 children); tours are at 8.30 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 2:30 p.m.

It also has a hummingbird garden ($5), a vast domed butterfly garden ($12), and a reptile exhibit ($12). Guided nature hikes are offered ($35).

Jewels of the Rainforest

The Jewels of the Rainforest Bio-Art Exhibition ($12), at Selvatura, displays more than 50,000 insects from around the world, yet it’s just a small fraction of Richard Whitten’s (tel. 506/2645-5929, www.biophotos.com [3]) findings from more than 50 years of collecting: the largest private collection of big, bizarre, and beautiful butterflies, beetles, and other bugs in the world.

It surely is the most colorful — a veritable kaleidoscope of shimmering greens, neon blues, startling reds, silvers, and golds. Whitten began collecting “bugs” at a tender age; today his 1,900 boxes include more than one million specimens, many of them collected in Costa Rica.

Part of the exhibit is dedicated to a collection of every species in the country. Some beetles are bigger than your fist; some moths outsize a salad plate. Other exhibits include shimmering beetles displayed against black velvet, like opal jewelry, and boxes of bugs majestically turned into caskets of gems.

Covering 232 square meters, exhibits include a Biodiversity Bank with dozens of spectacular and informative displays; a wall of Neotropical Butterflies; a World of Beetles, from Tutankhamen scarabs to the giants of the beetle word; a Phasmid Room (stick insects and family); and a Silk Room, displaying elegant moths. Other special themes include paleontology and medical entomology. A 279-square-meter auditorium screens fascinating videos. “Stunning, educational, and fun!” says Smithsonian entomologist David Roubik.

The dynamic displays combine art, science, music, and video to entertain and educate about insect mimicry, protective coloration and other forms of camouflage, prey-predator relationships, and more. The creativity is sheer choreography. Exhibits glitter against a background of opera and classical music, the climactic highs of the arias and ponderous lows of the cellos seemingly rising and falling to the drama of the displays, many of them re-creations of natural habitats under domed glass, the brilliant conception of Richard’s wife, Margaret.