The Obsession I Didn't Know I Had
The story of the first time I saw a ✨sloth 🦥✨
It was the end of July 2022 and I was floating through the sky on a 737,
unaware of the very specific joy that awaited me in the jungles of Costa
Rica. My boyfriend had orchestrated a surprise trip to the Central
American country as for my 27th birthday. He'd invited my wonderful mom
along and planned a gorgeous stay in
Manuel Antonio,
where our Pacific-Ocean-and-jungle-canopy-hotel-balcony-view was only a
short bus ride from
Manuel Antonio National Park.
Picture it: 4900 acres of lush jungle, full of monkeys, frogs,
tarantulas, deer, snakes, insects, crabs...and 😱
sloths.
Despite high hopes, tragedy struck! 😢 While we saw many monkeys,
hundreds of crabs, a grasshopper and a handful of iguanas, the only
sloth we came across was so high in the tree canopy that even my
camera's zoom lens couldn't get a good look at it.
I crossed my fingers and prayed that we'd come across another...
On the last day of our trip, mere hours before we would taxi back to the
airport in San José, we took the advice of a local and made our way to
the picturesque
Playa Biesanz.
And RIGHT THERE, not even TEN FEET above the sand, hanging contentedly
from a tree branch, munching on leaves, existed the best sloth there
ever was.
The three of us, my mom, boyfriend and myself, stood there and snapped
photos. Soon they left me to claim a spot on the beach...but I remained.
I was ENRAPTURED.
TRANSFIXED.
Did you know they have such wet noses? Such serenely happy expressions?
I'd never seen something eat a leaf with such pleasure. You cannot
convince me that sloths are not magical. In my opinion, they are now
on-par with unicorns. 🦄