Sloths, and how to actually see one

Most people who go to Costa Rica hope to see a sloth, and most of them do, though rarely in the way they imagined. The picture in the mind is of a round, smiling face at eye level. What usually happens is that a guide stops on a path, sets up a telescope on a tripod and points it at a greyish lump high in the canopy. You look through the eyepiece, and the lump turns out to have a face. That is how most sloths are seen. It is no less of a thrill for it, but it helps to know in advance.

Why they are so hard to find

Sloths live in the canopy, and their whole way of life is built around saving energy. They eat leaves, a poor and hard-to-digest food. They have unusually slow metabolisms, and they spend most of the day resting, curled into a fork of a branch. In that position a sloth looks remarkably like a termite nest, a clump of dead leaves or a knot in the tree. Their fur often carries a greenish tinge of algae, which is part of a small ecosystem of its own that includes moths that live nowhere else, and it helps the camouflage further.

There are two kinds in Costa Rica, and they behave differently. The brown-throated three-toed sloth is mostly active by day, if "active" is the word. It has a pale face with a dark band across the eyes that gives it a permanent mild smile. Hoffmann's two-toed sloth is larger, with a paler, more piggy snout. It is mostly nocturnal, and is likely to be asleep and tightly curled during the day. A night walk with a torch and a guide is often the best chance of seeing one move.

How to actually see one

The single most useful thing is a good local guide. Costa Rica's naturalist guides are trained to spot animals that most visitors would walk straight past, and many carry spotting telescopes for exactly this purpose. A guide who knows a particular stretch of forest will often know which trees its sloths have been using. Without a guide, the chances fall away sharply.

Three-toed sloths are particularly fond of the cecropia tree, which has large, hand-shaped leaves and a fairly open crown. That makes it one of the easier places to spot one. The open lowland forests of the Pacific coast, the canals and riverbanks of the Caribbean side, and the edges of clearings and gardens are all good places to look. Patience and slow walking pay. Sloths do move, slowly, and they come down from the trees about once a week to relieve themselves at the base of the trunk, which is when they are at their most vulnerable.

One thing to avoid is any place that offers the chance to hold or be photographed with a sloth. They are wild animals that are easily stressed by handling, and wildlife organisations advise against it. The best sloth encounter is one where the sloth hardly notices you at all.

Where the tours go looking

Manuel Antonio National Park, on the Pacific coast, has a reputation as one of the most reliable places to see sloths in the country. Its forest runs down to the beaches, and its trails are well walked by guides. Explore Worldwide's Highlights of Costa Rica, seven nights, includes it along with the volcano country at Arenal, the cloud forest at Monteverde and the Carara reserve, where the forest meets the dry Pacific north. It runs all year.

Tortuguero, on the Caribbean coast, is a different sort of landscape: a network of canals and rivers through lowland rainforest, explored by boat. Sloths are among the many animals seen from the water there, along with monkeys, caimans and a great many birds. Travelsphere's The Best of Costa Rica, eleven nights, combines Tortuguero with Monteverde, Carara and Manuel Antonio, giving several chances in quite different forests.

Explore Worldwide's Costa Rica Wildlife Tour, fourteen nights and also all year round, takes the broadest view of the country's wildlife. It includes the high cloud forest at San Gerardo de Dota and Savegre, the Pacuare River, Tortuguero and the lowland forests around Sarapiquí and Selva Verde. The lowland stops are the likelier sloth country. The highlands are better known for quetzals.

None of these can promise a sloth, since nothing wild comes with a guarantee. But with a guide, a telescope and a little patience, the odds in Costa Rica are good. The first one you see will probably be a lump, and you will remember it anyway.