On the third day of our stay in Costa Rica, we spent a leisurely morning enjoying a breakfast buffet with the most wonderful tropical fruit–pineapples, mangos, papayas–and many other delicacies and, of course, delicious coffee. In addition, we took a dip in the pool.

The rest of the morning, we were resting in front of our cabin, when, OMG, the following happened. First we thought we were hallucinating. After all, sloths are in forests and though there are lots of trees around the property of the hotel, we didn’t expect this little guy to just appear out of nowhere. He climbed down a tree, then slowly (it’s a sloth after all) crawled to the next tree, climbed up again, then down again. After that we saw him approach the next cabin, climb up the wooden rocking chair, down again, up the second chair, and then disappear. Shortly thereafter, the maid who was cleaning the next cabin, came over and motioned us to follow her. And there was Sammy (we named him in the meantime), curled up next to a chair in the corner, taking a nap.

One of the staff of the hotel came by with a long stick. I thought he was going to poke Sammy, but he only held the staff above the animal. Sammy grabbed on to the pole with both paws (or whatever you call the “hands” of a sloth) and the man carried him away toward the denser forest.

It was quite an experience and here is a video of Sammy. As you can hear from the noises we made, we were very excited. This was definitely one of the high points of our stay. I mean how many times do you have a sloth right in front of your bedroom, unless you live in the jungle? Unfortunately, the video is too large to put directly into the post, so here is the link to it!

https://onedrive.live.com/?id=8B7DD27C54709B7D%2130440&cid=8B7DD27C54709B7D

After the sloth adventure, we were booked for another excitement–Kayaking. When we decided on the tour, I said I had done this many years ago. Well, as I found out, that wasn’t true. I had been in a canoe once not a kayak. Then again, they are similar. Our driver and our guide took us to Arenal Lake, where we boarded a kayak for ourselves and the guide paddled in a different one. It took us a while to get the rhythm going, but we managed not to hit each other on the head with the paddle or splash each other. After a while, we were able to move in a fairly straight line. It was hard work, but also a lot of fun.

Lake Arenal is a man-made lake that provides electricity for the area. It’s also a nature resort with lots of water birds–we saw a few American Egrets and other birds. Our guide said there were crocodiles near an island in the lake. We thought he made that up. During one of the following tours, we did in fact see crocodiles, so perhaps it wasn’t a joke that they are in this lake as well.

Above is our guide, looking very amused at our attempts at kayaking!

In the background, the ever-present Arenal Volcano!

Stay tuned for further Costa Rican adventures–real crocodiles, and the scary adventure of ziplining! More to follow.