A 3 toed sloth, walking on the ground! We were in the right place at the right time to witness this!
That’s what one of the local guides said as about 30 of us witnessed this sloth “walk” across the road because you rarely see them on the ground. I say “walk” because it looked more like it pulled itself along. What an amazing thing to see and so close up. Poor thing was probably wondering what all these giant 2 legged things were that were watching it, but, in true sloth fashion, it didn’t seem stressed at all. He just made his way to the other side and pulled himself up a tree to get comfy. I did some research about 3 toed sloths and found that they come down out of the trees only once a week for about 30 minutes and that’s to relieve themselves....so I guess we caught this guy just as he finished his weekly bathroom break!
We saw this sloth and a couple of others along with a monkey during our visit to the Manuel Antonio National park yesterday. It’s one of the most popular places to go to in Costa Rica and that was evident by the fact that there was already a line up to get in when we arrived there at 9:30 am. They limit the number of visitors in it to 600 at a time. Good for the environment and the animals but boy, waiting in line in the sun, even that early in the day is wicked. Luckily we only had to wait for about 20 minutes before we got let in.
In addition to the animals there, there are beautiful, white sand beaches. Could have stayed there all day just enjoying the natural and human scenery. Much better human scenery here than in Florida if you know what I mean! :-)
Finally had to drag ourselves away from the beach to get some real food by 2pm. Stopped at a really cool, airplane based restaurant (you’ll see what I mean in the pics) and had our best meal yet. The ocean view from their dining room was spectacular! If we didn’t have to drive back to San Jose, we could have easily stayed there the rest of the day. The ice cold cervases were tasting so good....but duty called and we had to get back.