Baby Sloths at the Toucan Rescue Centre in San Jose, Costa Rica

Visiting The Toucan Rescue Centre outside of San Jose was so cool! We were a bit worried about how much we would enjoy it after we visited the Jaguar Rehab Centre in Manzanillo and had a spectacular time. Both centres had similar animals but The Toucan Rescue centre was triple the cost as the Jaguar Centre and some of the reviews were pretty harsh. We decided to keep our reservation at the Toucan Rescue Centre to get the most of our time in Costa Rica but we weren't sure what we were walking into.

We reserved the Slothies and Coffees morning tour of the centre. I'm an avid coffee drinker and just finished up a consulting gig in the industry so this tour name really spoke to me. My mom drinks coffee with a pound of sugar and cream so she was happy with the ample supply of additives. Of course since it's Costa Rica the coffee wasn't that good -.- BUT we did get to drink it during the morning play time of the sloths in Kindergarten. You can see them playing behind me in the first photo and the photo below.

It was interesting to learn why these rescue and rehab centres have popped up around Costa Rica. Unfortunately it's largely the fault of humans. At both centres the animals that were permanent residents were because they had been kept as pets. Because the animals aren't suited to be pets when they grew up they very quickly couldn't stay in an apartment or back yard pen. We saw this happen with monkeys, wild cats, parrots, macaws and even this little guy.

The reason sloths are taken into care is most often from their parents being electrocuted by the power lines. They think the power lines are branches and try to climb across them. This is so sad. Of course sloths would try to climb power lines, they even look like branches to me. Apparently the government isn't concerned with this issue so the the rescue centres do what they can to nurse the babies and return them to the wild.

Another important note is that both centres have had many successful releases back into the wild. They focus a lot on this so they keep people quite aways away from the animals. You can only go into the rescue centres as a guided tour and both times the group were pretty small. They said they try to get the community involved as much as possible to help change the environment for the animals of the future.

After the tour we checked out an Argentinian restaurant and again I remembered to take photos of our meals! We had gotten rained on during the tour (goes rain or shine) so we wanted big plentiful meals. I also deal with low iron so with all the traveling and very little red meat I decided it was time for a steak.

This pic of my mom isn't the best but you get the gist :)

This was our last day in San Jose, Costa Rica. Up next SAN FRANCISCO AND NAPA VALLEY!!