tebtosca | I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

....and I come bearing gifts!

Hello, flist! I'm back from Costa Rica with a camera full of baby sloth pics, a peeling nose and forehead combo that looks dangerously close to Freddie Kreuger, and a shrunken stomach from food poisoning (NO BIG!) I had a glorious time, and I thought I would share some of it with all of you (not the food poisoning part) :D

First things first. We landed in San Jose and then took the three hour drive up to the Arenal volcano area. It was amazingly beautiful, as you can see here:

The area is known for it's hot springs, and we indulged in the ones both at our hotel, and the larger ones close by. That one was especially great since the bartender was adorable and DIMPLED, and we all know what that does to a girl, amirite?

My friend chillin:

Costa Rica is famous as the place that basically invented ziplining, and the Arenal boasts one of the most amazing canopies to do it on. My friend is an adrenaline-junkie, as you can see from her doing it in this video:

What was my reaction to the idea of ziplining hundreds of feet in the air over a rainforest?

Yup. My idea of adventure is going to the IKEA out in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

I did, however, go up to the top of the mountain on the little Sky Tram thing-y in order to check out the view and take that video of my friend being suicidal. On the way back down, it was just me, the amazingly funny tour guide Daniella, and this couple from Ohio, who couldn't go ziplining because the husband got thrown off his ATV the day before (SEE WHAT I MEAN, ADVENTUROUS PEOPLE??) Anyway! On the way down the mountain, the dude points to a tree and is like "SLOTH!", which is basically like yelling "CHOCOLATE CAKE!" to me, you know, so Daniella gets on her walkie-talkie and they back the tram up and all four of us are leaning over the side of this tram, which is SWAYING ON THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN, on the off chance that we will see a sloth. I even managed to forget for a few seconds that I could have PLUNGED TO MY DEATH.

So, anyway, we were there for three days, and then as we are checking out, the front desk guy points out THIS JURASSIC PARK LOOKING CREATURE just chillin' there next to the desk like my dog or something:

This is basically a re-enactment of the following 30 seconds of my life:

So my friend, obviously, is the one that took that picture. She also started PETTING IT like it was a bunny and not a MAN-EATING DINOSAUR BUG. I remained huddled in the corner of the lobby gift shop like this:

Anyway! We then drove about 5 or 6 hours to the Caribbean side of the country, to Puerto Viejo, which is where we got to spend time at the beach (which was gorgeous):

But forget all that, I know why you guys are here--SLOTHSSSSSSSSSSSS!

On Saturday morning we got up super early like it was Christmas or something (but without the vodka that my mom used to leave out for Santa...hmmm, that's not odd, right?) We got to the Sloth Sanctuary just as they opened at 8am and were basically the only ones there. This was fantastic, since we basically got a private tour the whole time.

We first went on an hour canoe ride around the rainforest surrounding the sanctuary, and it was both super peaceful and exciting at the same time, with the howler monkeys...howling, and all the crazy birds and lizards and stuff. It was beautiful!

Our lovely guide (who took Doom Chops to an unheard-of, Civil War-ian level), gave us a tour of the grounds and explained some of the history of the sloth, which can be traced back 65 MILLION YEARS (take that, Creation Museum!) After that, he took us to visit some of the adult sloths.

The sanctuary takes in a lot of injured and disabled sloths, like the ones that climb up telephone poles thinking it's a tree and then burn themselves. They try to fix them up and send them back to the wild, but sometimes there are animals that are too badly disabled, and those stay with them at the sanctuary. Just among the ones we met, there was a blind sloth:

and an awesome little dude with one-arm, named Toyota:

But seriously though, guys, it was like

hoodie_time for sloths LOL

Then he took us over to the thing that I've been waiting for since I literally sprang from my mother's battered womb SIX WEEKS LATE. No, really, if you didn't believe the sloth was my lazy ass spirit animal before, that should prove it.

BABY SLOTHSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

There were twelve babies in their cages, and another six in the infirmary that we didn't get to see because they were under medical care. There was one that was so small and new that they didn't even have a name for him yet, but we called him Teddy because he was like a little stuffed animal:

One of the medical volunteers then brought in an awesome dude named Corey, who looked liked Stoned!Dean during the Turduken episode:

We were already twitching at that point, but then it got even better when the Sloth Whisperer lady came out and started talking to us. She was super knowledgeable and great and brought out two of the babies to give us a closer look. We were not allowed to touch the babies because they were unsure about the chemicals on our skin (i.e. suntan lotion, bug spray) but we were within centimeters of them and I even got to feed one of them flowers! :D

She plopped the first one, VELCRO (a 2-fingered sloth), in the bucket in front of us, but--like his name suggests--he was having none of that shit, and immediately attached himself to her shirt lulz.

Then they brought out SILVANA (a 3-fingered sloth). I might have turned into a ball of baby-talking goo around her, so please ignore my horrible voice lol:

At one point, Silvana was SO JEALOUS that Velcro was getting hugs, and she desperately tried to get Doom Chop Guide to hug her. Alas, she was foiled (hilariously)!

I was *thisclose* to grabbing Silvana and making a run for the border. Considering that I can run about as fast as a sloth, I'm not sure I would have gotten too far. Curses!

Finally, after an hour or so, we had to leave the babies. We went inside to go visit Buttercup, who was the very first orphan baby that they took in, in 1991. Buttercup inspired them to make rescuing sloths their life mission, and all this time later, she is now the mascot (and a total ham!)

So that's a bit of my trip to Costa Rica! There is a bunch more, but those were some of the highlights. If you want to donate to the Sanctuary, you can do so HERE! :D