day 14: sloth center

perhaps inspired by our sloth crossing yesterday (or the fact that it’s fucking raining again so beach activities are just flat out) we decided to attempt a journey to the sloth rescue center.

this entails: sharing a cab with the french-canadians into puerto viejo, then hopping onto the bus to puerto limon, getting stopped and searched by the police, and then nervously trying to figure out where the hell the place actually is, whether the bus driver understood where we were going and was going to stop the bus there, and how to actually say “is the stop for the sloth center coming up soon?”

as it turns out, perhaps the avarios del caribe is a popular destination, as several locals warned us that it was coming up anyway and made sure we got off at the right place, about 10km north of cahuita. what do you find at a sloth center?

well, duh. sloths.

it seems that about 15 years ago some local girls brought an orphaned sloth to a american woman living here. she tried to find information on how to raise sloths, and none was to be found. instead she ended up becoming the authority on sloths, and rescuing and adopting more sloths, and now there’s an entire center where they adopt and raise orphaned or injured two and three toed sloths. we got to see several of them, including two baby two toed sloths who were hanging out in a cardboard box. crazy cute.

it’s a cool place and very informative, although pretty steep for costa rica ($25!). but you get a nice boat tour through the canals and lagoons. plus, it’s for the sloths!
Posted at January 19, 2007 7:25 PM