We started the day with breakfast with Daffodil, a 26 year old sloth at the Sloth Sanctuary. She was the first sloth to arrive at the sanctuary and the reason it was established.
We'd booked for the insider tour which meant we got to see more behind the scenes. They have over 170 sloths there that need caring for, many will never be able to be returned to the wild for various reasons. Some were too young when they came and don't know how to be a sloth...we have some friends that might be able to teach them a thing or two (5 toed sloths). Others have been too injured, there was a paraplegic sloth :-( who had fallen onto a sharp rock, another who had lost one of its arms due to straddling an electrical wire.
By far the best thing about the sanctuary is the nursery, this is where all the baby sloths a cared for 24 hours a day. We walked into this room and there on the floor were 4 tubs of baby sloths all wanting to get out and play. They all start reaching out for you but sadly we can't touch them, as much as they wanted us to...not as much as we wanted to touch them.
There were also some in the incubators, all trying to reach out to you. It took every ounce of self control not to touch them.
We didn't think buckets of baby sloths could be topped but our afternoon activity came close, the Jaguar Rescue Centre. They don't actually have Jaguars, that's just the name of the rescue centre. Here we were lucky enough to have the resident vet, Fernando, take us on a private tour of the centre.
Some of the resident animals we got close to included: An anteater, more sloths, agouti...
A very licky deer, who wouldn't stop licking us...tongue poised ready below:
We were able to pat a kitten (margay)
A playful ocelot that liked to chew on Fernando's arm.
But the best experience was hanging out and feeding the baby monkeys. They loved to play on you and we were happy to oblige. One monkey "Mitchy" claimed Debbie as his own and they had to bring in another employee to help extract us from the monkey play area, he didn't want to let her go.
Where Debbie was claimed by a monkey, for Tracey it was a squirrel:
It was an amazing centre and Fernando was a great guide. We watched him in action doing his vet thing with a few of the critters.
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