On the first day of our trip, we were picked up by our bus driver, Nicolas, and our guide, Mario, and met our college friends, Vadim, Justyna and Juanita. We also met a new couple, Cheryl and Chuck, from Hawaii. We would have to wait another day to meet the remaining couple, Cindy and Stuart, because they suffered travel issues on the way from Maryland.

We traveled through rugged mountains, lush banana plantations, and small villages on our way to the Caribbean lowlands. En route, we stopped at the Toucan Rescue Ranch, which is a sanctuary whose mission is to rescue, rehabilitate, and release Costa Rican wildlife, such as the two-fingered sloth pictured here.

The biologist informed us that all sloths have three toes, but they differ in the number of fingers, so she prefers this nomenclature instead. The reason they move slowly is because they are conserving energy. They actually have very low body mass, an attribute hidden by all the fur. However, they can be pretty fast when they need to be, especially when forced to protect themselves.

Here’s a link to a web gallery for more pictures from the Toucan Rescue Ranch. NOTE: I am still working on making these galleries more user friendly, especially for cell phone viewers. I will keep playing with the format to improve this. For the time being, they are best viewed on a computer, but if you must use your phone, I strongly suggest that you flip your phone into landscape orientation. Most of the pics were taken this way.

After stopping for lunch, we finally made our way to our Hotel La Diosa. This is nothing like hotels you may be used to. It is tucked away in a small piece of land next to the beach, where there was minimal clearing to make room for the buildings.

That evening, before dinner, we took a short hike to explore the grounds. Here’s a link to web gallery of that hike(only 3 pictures). Driving back from dinner, we spied more sloths, one of which was crawling along the telephone lines(electrocuted sloths is one of the reasons they end up at the Toucan Rescue Ranch). When we got home, we took another night hike at the grounds(no pictures) revealed more sloths and other animals.