When I went to Costa Rica, I had several things that I wanted to see.  To be a successful trip, I needed to see a toucan, a monkey and a sloth.  As you know I saw everything on my list and more.  The sloth was a pretty awesome sight.

She’s a little hard to make out because sloths are all fur and nails, but you can see that she’s grasping the tree with her right arm and her head is above it.  I say “she” because this sloth had a tiny three toed sloth baby on her belly and only the females carry their young.  You can see the baby’s claws in the picture below.

Sloths are hard to get pictures of because all they do is sleep.  Seriously, they sleep 15 to 20 hours a day.  They live in the trees and only climb down the tree once a week to defecate.  Sloths always defecate in the same spot and bury the evidence by digging a hole with their tail.  I couldn’t find a good explanation for why they do it in the same spot and why they don’t just poop from the air.  My guess is that it makes them less vulnerable to predators because the predators don’t know where they are in the tree if the evidence is buried.

These sloths were hanging out in a tree by the pool.  One of the owners of the Tiskita Jungle Lodge told us a sad story about how last year it rained for 22 straight days and the next week he found nine sloths dead on the ground.  He surmised that the water must have soaked up their fur and made them so heavy that they fell off.  Alternatively, eating plants soaked in water could have made them drown.  Either way, my heart would break if I saw that many dead sloths.

It’s funny, I’m not even sure that I knew what a sloth was two years ago but now they seem to be really popular.  I first became excited about sloths after watching this video about a place in Costa Rica where they take care of orphaned sloths.  Now Kristen Bell has really exposed people to sloths by talking about them on Ellen.  I think people like them so much because sloths look like they’re smiling all the time.

During our first day at the Tiskita Jungle Lodge, we brought our bags to the room and noticed that the bathroom is outside.  As in, there are walls around the bathroom, but there was a three foot gap between the walls and the roof so it’s private but very much outside.  I’m telling you all this because I was very startled later that night when I was using the bathroom and a bat flew right by my face!

photo by Jon

There are plenty of bats at Tiskita but the special one is this white bat.  Based on my research, I think he’s called a Northern Ghost Bat.  They called him El Blanco at the lodge.  He had favorite cabins where he stayed during the day.

photo by Jon

He looked pretty grumpy, I think we might have been preventing him from napping.

photo by Jon

There are other white bats in Central America, like the Honduran White Bat, but they have noses almost like pigs with giant snouts.  I prefer El Blanco and his delicate features.  His translucent wings are especially cool.

photo by Jon

I want to find more bats.  They’re really interesting.

Costa Rica has wonderful beaches.  Unlike where we lived near San Francisco the water is warm enough to swim in.

The beaches are covered in holes that are home to crabs.

photo by Jon

The crabs are very shy so if they see you move they’ll go back into the holes.  But I laid on a towel, didn’t move and waited for them to come out.

Next to the crab holes are little round globs of sand.  It looks like the crabs were pushing the sand together with their claws.

There were also hermit crabs on the sand and on land there were crabs that dig holes into the walls of the land to lay eggs.  I really wanted to get a look at the second kind of crab, but they said you have to sit motionless for hours for the crabs to come out.

The Costa Rican jungle is filled with creatures.  The best way to find lizards and frogs is to look where you’re stepping and focus in on any movement.  You can also find them on plants.

photo by Jon

This is a neotropical green anole.  They’re only found in Central America.  Jon took all these photos.  My Sigma takes awful pictures of little things and Jon is incredibly talented when it comes to getting unique pictures of small objects.  Jon also wants you to know that he’s sick right now and he thinks it’s because the lizard bit him.  The anole is really beautiful up close.

photo by Jon

Do you see the blue coloring on his back?  In researching anoles I’ve seen a lot of variation in coloring for the Neotropical Green Anole.  Some are all green, some have more blue.  They’re all between five to eight inches long.

photo by Jon

I really like his eyes.  They’re so clear.

photo by Jon