Still on the cruise, our first stop in Costa Rica was a Puerto Jimenez. We took Zodiacs over to the rocky beach where we caught a bus to go on our “Concierge Collection, Sloth Walking Trails” excursion. This excursion took us to La Perica Sloth Garden.
La Perica is a small, family owned, working Palm farm. The owners set aside about 6 acres near a stream to remain natural. They put in some gravel trails that make for an easy walk through the natural areas.
Palm farming is a major problem throughout the world because native forests are cut down to create plantations that provide no habitat for wildlife. This is something to consider when buying products, palm oil as an ingredient is generally bad for wildlife. This is definitely something I want to keep in mind as it is a major ingredient in much peanut butter and I eat a LOT of peanut butter.
Ok, PSA on palm oil aside, let me get back to the tour! The tour started in a covered area where they had restrooms and picnic tables where we sat while Dennis, the lead tour guide for our excursion gave a bit of history on the farm. The Valverde family purchased a farm and wanted to preserve the stream and develop habitat around it that was left that grow naturally. They then put in some trails to observe birds and found that they also had some sloths living in this forested area.
I was definitely distracted during the overview by the birds and dogs in that area!
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| A Red Lored Parrot creeped above the bathroom door. Dennis explained that he was a rescue who stays around the farm. |
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| King the dog let me give him some scritches. Which was great as I was going through some major dog withdrawal by this point in the trip! |
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| I was excited to find this unusual (to me) ground bird. But then I realized it was a chicken. |
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| A Black-Cheeked Ant Tanager hangs out in the branches near the picnic area |
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| A male and female Scarlet Rumped Tanage pair also lingers near the picnic area |
After the overview, we split the large group into two with separate guides and set off on the paths. They were relatively short, but there was lots of wildlife. Our guides were very good at finding critters and setting up scopes for us to see more easily when our animal friends were high up in the trees.
Along the trails we saw a Yellow-Throated Toucan. I couldn’t decide on a single photo that captured this bird well with a hint of red on its front and big dark bill, so I’m posting four!
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| Itchy bird, but what a big beak |
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| Beak open while it sings the song of its people! |
In the beautiful birds category, there was also a scarlet Macaw who I was unable to get a photo of before it flew away. Fortunately there were other Scarlet Macaws who I did managed to capture photos of.
There were plenty of other creatures that I didn’t expect to see as well!
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| There was a family of tent-making bats on the inside of a palm leaf. Look at those ears!!! |
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| A butterfly posing for a photo |
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| A pair of juvenile Kinkajou with tails and a paw that just couldn’t fit in the tree cavity. I would have loved for them to pop all the way out, but they are nocturnal so we’re lucky to see this much of them. |
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| A lizard on a log over the stream |
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| A perfumed passion flower which was quite pretty near the forest floor |
We also saw some more farm animals out on the trails.
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| Unnamed Geese! As far as I could tell they weren’t trouble makers though. |
And of course the stars of the show, sloths! Sloths like to chill in trees with their arms covering their faces, so any sloth face is a treat. We also got to see a few baby sloths, which was super cute! There were two sloth types on the farm, two-toed and three-toed. Two-toed sloths are nocturnal. All of the sloths were sleeping anyway. They tend to be inactive for much of the day. It seems that we were lucky to
see a sloth moving in Panama City.
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| A three toed sloth shows its face! |
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| A different view of the same face! |
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| A mother sloth with a baby hugging her as they hang from a branch. |
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| Look a that sloth nose! I think this one was a baby with mother too. You can see the baby’s smaller claws facing a bigger seeming animal on the branch. |
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| A two toed sloth sleeping in the branches alone. |
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| A baby sloth who has left is mother was on a tree branch about 10 feet above the ground. It wouldn’t show us its face, but it was tiny and adorable regardless. |
After the tour, we had a delicious, home-made cheese empanadas with fresh fruit. This was definitely a wonderful tour. I did wish we’d had more time to spend waiting for the baby sloth to show his face or for the Kinkajous to come out of the tree – but also we had to get back to our cruise ship.
