PUERTO QUEPOS, COSTA RICA
Highlight of the day? Sloths, definitely sloths.
THE MANUEL ANTONIO NATIONAL PARK is one of Costa Rica's smallest (1,500 acres) and busiest. One hundred and twenty hotels of every size and class line the twisting road that leads to the park and only 35 licensed guides are authorized to host visitors along the dirt walkways that lead through the rain forest to a pair of beautiful, white-sand beaches and coral reefs. At the height of its busiest season (December-March), the gates are locked after 1,000 visitors are inside. On most days, every 20 yards a small group of visitors huddles around a khaki-shirted guide armed with a tripod-mounted scope, who has locked in on a particular butterfly or viper, howler monkey or three-toed (or two-toed) sloth.
I'd never seen either variety of sloth in the wild and have to say I was happily stunned by their lack of activity, making them easy to spy and observe - unlike the monkeys, who move through the top of the trees like urban bad-boys playing a non-stop game of hide-and-seek. Other than the occasional two-fingered (or three-fingered) scratch, the sloths literally just hang out in the tops of the trees; so lethargic are they, most come down to earth just once a week, to defecate.
PUERTO QUEPOS, once an isolated island now connected to the mainland by a thin strip of land, risks one-day becoming the Costa Rican version of New Orleans, since its small main town currently exists about 10-feet below sea level. For now a series of earth-and-stone bulwarks protect it from the Pacific Ocean, but if rains continue to fall as they did the previous week - or if one of those hurricanes that just passed had managed to come onshore more directly - the town could easily find itself an island once again, and worse.
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