The last couple of days I have been in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. I really liked it there, and I would definitely go back sometime during the high season because it was quiet and rather rainy the whole time so I didn't really see it in all its glory. The World Cup has started, and that seems to be the main activity for most of the people here. There are 3 or 4 games a day so if you wanted to that could take up your whole day! I did watch the first half of Costa Rica's match against Uruguay. They ended up winning, but I missed the second half in favour of going on a tour of a chocolate farm and factory.
I didn't spend any time on the beach in Puerto Viejo, despite my objective to spend some time in both oceans before going home to ocean-less Ontario. I did hang out with some cool animals though! I went to a wildlife sanctuary in Puerto Viejo and saw lots of snakes, monkeys, a couple of sloths, an ocelot, a crocodile... It was so cool. I know they were in captivity but I definitely thought it was a better experience than wandering around the jungle and not seeing anything! I did that as well and of course it was beautiful but all the green got a little boring after a while when I didn't see any animals.
Yesterday I went to the sloth sanctuary near Cahuita and that was AWESOME. Saw a couple babies, a few older ones, learned the difference between two-toed and three-toed sloths, and went on a cool canoe ride where we saw a few sloths in the 'wild'. They were not that wild because they had previously been at the sanctuary so they were comfortable around humans, but it was still cool to see them moving about in the tree. Apparently sloths are the most common arborial (tree) mammal in Costa Rica. More common than monkeys. They are just so good at what they do (camouflage, moving slowly) that they are impossible to see. Many of the sloths were rescued, they had some sad stories. One of them electrocuted himself on a high-voltage power line and then fell to the ground and broke his arm in a bunch of places. He now only has one arm. Another one was paraplegic because he fell and got hit by a car. Not sure how you could hit a sloth with your car, its not like they can run across the road very quickly!
Well its about time for me to say goodbye to the caribbean. A geographic regular in my life over the past 6 months (bahamas, mexico, guatemala, honduras, Costa Rica) I don't know when I will be back again... I definitely want to come back to visit the Corn Islands in Nicaragua, I heard from so many people how amazing they are. I really wanted to go diving one more time before the end of this trip, but while there is good diving on the Caribbean in Costa Rica, there has been two much rain which limits the visibility so it wouldn't be worth it.
Onward to San Jose and then Toronto!
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