Sloth Sanctuary WildLife Hike

I am very impressed with this experience. The drive was a bit long from where we were staying, but I am grateful that they even offered transportation for us knowing how long the drive would be. Everyone from the guides to the driver was so friendly and made sure we were accommodated. We saw several sloths, toucans, and howler monkeys. Highly recommend this experience.

Tour guide moved pick up time 4 different times and then was an hour late. Changed drivers halfway to location which seemed extremely odd. Tour guide didn’t have funds to pay for group lunch that was included and we had to wait nearly an extra hour for driver to go get money. Sanctuary is more like someone’s private lands. Saw a few birds, frogs - and finally at the end they produced a baby sloth “in the wild”. What was supposed to be a 4-5 hour tour turned into nearly 12 hours from pick up to drop off. Oh! And did I mention, we had to make a stop to drop the tour guide off at her home before we could be taken back to ours???

We added this tour to a separate river cruise tour, but ended up wishing that we hadn't. We arrived at the unmarked site and parked in the dirt driveway. A nice young man named Lester took us and our guide along the trail, and we quickly came across a sloth hanging in a very small tree next to the trail. We could have reached out and touched him, but we didn't out of respect. Lester also pointed out Howler monkeys and a stunning Zebra Tarantula in it's burrow! The trails were easy to navigate and well kept, and the property is beautiful. The problem came when we were returning to the car to find the SINAC ranger authorities waiting for us. They informed us that this was an illegal activity that the owner Leo was engaged in, and that this was the second time they had to confiscate his sloth. They said Leo was obtaining the sloth from another area, and that this area was not a natural or healthy environment for the sloth. The guides Mauricio and Lester, and even our driver Martin were visibly upset about this turn of events, and supposedly the authorities were attempting to reach Leo by phone, but were unsuccessful. We were all detained for 2 hours while the sloth was captured and a report was filled out. We purchased this tour from a charming fellow named J.J. who had a booth at our Occidental Papagayo Resort. When we relayed our experience to him, there was no attempt made to compensate us for such a traumatic experience, only an excuse that Leo was being unfairly victimized by a jealous party that didn't have a property that qualified for keeping sloths in. He also indicated that the SINAC people didn't confiscate the sloths of a nearby "rescue center" perhaps because they were getting a kickback from the larger outfit. In the end, we wound up feeling very bad for the sloth if he was made to suffer on our account, and it did seem like the sloth was "staged" for us in such a close and convenient spot, instead of being in one of the much bigger trees all around us. All in all a very traumatic experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone else (one of the authority men even had a gun)! We had piggy-backed this tour with the boat tour, which we had no issues with, so I left separate reviews for each. Since we got a ceramics presentation at the place we had lunch, there was no presentation done again here, so for what they charged us ($120 extra) and for the stress we had to endure, we felt it was a rip-off that the tour company made no attempt to rectify, thus the low rating.