Wildlife
Costa Rica Pictures

Specialists in Central America adventure travel, GAA operate good value, small group tours of Costa Rica. Discounts Costa Rica Panama Trail | Reef and Jungles | Surf and Volcanoes

Click top or bottom images to see Costa Rica birds

Wildlife: Sloths are, for obvious reasons, one of the easiest tree-dwellers to spot in Costa Rica's rainforest.

Monkeys are common but tend to disappear at speed especially when they've got the contents of your backpack in their grubby little hands. The best ways to get closer to tree-huggers, other than leaving food around your campsite, is to take a skywalk on an elevated pathway.

A White-Face monkey prowling the beach in Cahuita National Park.
© Olga Martelet, Dreamstime.com

An anaconda looking out for a monkey morsel; or if not, a baby turtle would do....
© Martin Krause, Dreamstime.com

Food when camping: If you have a car, keep all edibles and trash in the car or in a cooler box with something heavy weighing down the lid. If you have no wheels try to leave your food in the nearby ranger station.
Monkeys and coatis are adept at breaking into tents or reaching tree-hung bags, undoing/unzipping them and gobbling the contents.

A newborn leatherback turtle heads for the ocean on Playa Grande beach. Move it, tiny! And don't look back!

Costa Rica has both Caribbean [212kms/131mls] and Pacific coasts [1016kms/630mls - much longer due to its serpentine routing]. The Pacific side hosts two famous turtle hatching beaches, Playa Grande [in Parque Nacional Marino las Baulas de Guanacaste] for the huge leatherbacks and beaches in Refugio Nacional de Vida Silestre Ostional for olive ridley sea turtles.

If you're spending time on turtle beaches be careful with torches as turtles, big and small, navigate to the sea by reflected light off the sea so torchlight can throw them terminally off course.