Exotic Animals in Costa Rica

The elusive quetzal! I have been looking for this guy for 5 months and finally spotted him at The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica. The quetzal is a very colourful, long-tailed bird that hides out in the Americas and is often held as the most beautiful bird in the Western Hemisphere! The quetzal is also the national bird of Guatemala and so prized that they coined their units of money after this glorious bird.



Tree hugging in Manuel Antonio National Park! This is a sloth, my new favourite animal.
I was following a well-marked path in Manuel Antonio on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica when I saw a group of tourists starring up into a huge tree. When I got closer I realized they had spotted a sloth, a brown fuzzy blur, high above our heads. The sloth seemed to be asleep and the crowd soon dispersed, more interested in the surrounding beaches. My Irish friend Sharon and I stayed behind and were in awe because we had yet to encounter a sloth on our hiking adventures. We were in for a treat when this two-toed, male sloth made his way down the tree and to the ground in front of us. When I took this picture I was 3 feet from this enchanting creature!

You need a bit more information to understand the rarity of this opportunity. Firstly, sloths only come to the ground about once a week. They live most of their lives hanging upside down in trees, where they eat, sleep, mate and give birth. Secondly, sloths are nocturnal animals and sleep approximately 18 hours a day! They are hunted by jaguars, eagles and people and so they are very cautious about making their decent to the jungle floor once a week to defecate beneath their cecropia tree. They eat the leaves of the cecropia tree and it is believed that they defecate at the base in order to fertilize the trees that sustain them. The great circle of life!
Sloths are the slowest mammals on Earth and get their name from their lack of speed, not laziness, as it is commonly believed. We were entranced by the sloth´s tai-chi like movements as he meditatively made his way down to the ground. A truly beautiful and mesmerizing performance to witness.




The dazzling, Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, an engineering marvel! Outside a cafe, in Monteverde, I relaxed in the Hummingbird Gallery where hundreds of hummingbirds flocked to drink the sweet water hung in feeders for them. Hummingbirds have always fascinated me. Their wings beat about 80 times per second and fly 850-1600 km during migration from Canada to Mexico or Central America, non-stop! Phenomenal!