A world of wildlife riches in Costa Rica

As everyone excitedly points their cameras up into the thick canopy of trees, I curse the fact that watching wildlife demands good eyesight.  

I squint a little harder while my sharp-eyed companions share useless hints like “behind those big green leaves”. Eventually a little brown blob adjusts its position, and its movement catches my eye. A sloth! One of those extraordinary furballs that spend most of their lives munching leaves and moving at a snail’s pace. 

Searching for sloths is a big thing in Costa Rica, the tiny country in Central America that’s regarded as a world leader in environmental restoration and conservation.

People also flock there in search of quetzals, stunning birds with green backs, red breasts and long shimmering bluish tails. Given my appalling eyesight I didn’t even attempt the 6am quetzal-spotting walk in a cloud forest. The birds proved elusive, and I felt a smug satisfaction at having avoided a chilly morning of steady rain on a wild quetzal chase. 

I wasn’t in Costa Rica for the birds. I was there for jungles, cloud forests, idyllic beaches and the sheer exoticness of a place that has captured my imagination since I was a kid. It lived up to those expectations even though this was rainy season, when blue skies are replaced by ominous clouds and disruptive downpours. While rainy season lacks the sun, it also lacks the tourists, and that’s a fair trade in my book. Though the country covers only 0.03% of the world’s land mass, it’s home to an estimated 5% of all species. That’s about 500,000 types of flora and fauna, much of it protected in reserves and national parks that cover more than a quarter of the land.  

Yet it wasn’t always the Garden of Eden that it’s portrayed as today. Deforestation was rampant in the past to clear space for monoculture farming and cattle ranches that damaged the environment. The vision of reversing the destruction has certainly been in play for decades, though, with one travelling companion sporting a T-shirt she bought there 29 years ago declaring: “Only when the last tree has died, the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught, will we realise that we cannot eat money.” 

That unwieldy slogan was replaced by Pura Vida, Costa Rica’s catchphrase meaning “pure life” and used liberally for anything from hello to goodbye and “everything’s fine, thanks”. 

Not quite everything is fine yet, however. Alan Cespedes, my guide on a tour run by Travel Excellence, spoke candidly about some of the ongoing failings. As we passed vast banana plantations, he told us how pesticides that are banned elsewhere in the world are still used here, causing birth defects and illnesses in humans and wildlife. As we drove on we saw a crop-spraying plane taking off from a little airstrip, about to spread more chemicals.  

The problem is so bad that in 2022 the UN Development Programme warned Costa Rica that its overuse of pesticides was threatening the lives of workers. 

The bananas are also picked prematurely so they don’t overripen on their long export journeys, leaving them looking perfect but tasting bland. As evidence, Cespedes tempted us with short and stubby bananas grown for the local market. Not a good looking bunch, but full of flavour. 

Living conditions for the mainly Nicaraguan workers are poor, and it’s almost impossible to earn enough to break the generational cycle that will see their own kids work for the plantations too. In September, the Business & Human Rights Resource reported on trade union repression by banana companies, including firing and blacklisting anyone fighting for better conditions. The pineapple trade was similar, Cespedes explained as we passed other monoculture fruit fields.  

The government intervened in the banana trade years ago by ending the monopoly of one private company and opening up the market. 

Other improvements have come through international pressure for ethical farming, such as the Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade, though those are led from abroad and are not part of the government’s own initiatives. 

So far, the industries that are a powerhouse of the economy continue to blight Costa Rica’s image as a clean, green pura vida champion. Yet its achievements in other areas are outstanding. It generates more than 98% of its electricity from renewable sources, and vast tracts of land have been rewilded.

Even in the capital, San Jose, there’s a large forest on the University of Costa Rica campus, created over the past 60 years by replanting what was once a cattle ranch. The most mature sections are magical, with soaring trees and clinging vines and, somehow, sloths have managed to move in.

Some of the university’s biologists have formed a company called Oropopo (spectacled owl,) to offer eco-friendly experiences. On a tour around the campus biologist Raquel Bone found us more sloths in two hours than I’d seen in two weeks on tour. This time I didn’t even need to squint, because the foliage was less dense than in far older canopies. One sloth was slowly munching through the leaves, unfazed by the admiring stares of the students and visitors below. 

Bone also took us into the butterfly garden, full of delights like glass-winged butterflies you can see right through, and the giant blue morpho, whose iridescent blue wings can disappear behind lower wings that close to mimic the ferocious face of an owl. 

Costa Rica’s bounty of wildlife has seen tourism replace fruit as its largest industry, and in this regard it’s unbeatable. Its different biospheres include cloud forests, active volcanoes, mangrove swamps and beaches on both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. It’s a riot of colour, with supersized flowers and birds and butterflies straight out of a kid’s colouring book. 

Leisure activities include surfing, white water rafting, canyoning, hiking and luxuriating in hot springs. Modern ziplining was even invented here — by US researcher Donald Perry when he was studying monkeys in Monteverde cloud forest and needed to keep up with them. One of the highlights is Tortuguero National Park, reached by boat from the town of Cano Blanco. Puttering along the jungle waterways is wonderful, with a sharp-eyed guide pointing out kingfishers and toucans, iguanas and a caiman with its teeth glinting in the sunlight. This is turtle territory too, with thousands coming ashore to nest on the protected beaches.

The little log cabins we stayed in at Evergreen Lodge have no glass windows, just mosquito nets, so you can lie in bed and listen to nature. I was hoping to hear howler monkeys putting on a spooky performance, but they were off duty. Instead the entertainment came from evil-looking capuchin monkeys with their white Joker faces. They loiter by the restaurant in case a careless guest leaves something unattended, but the staff are armed with water pistols in their aprons, drawn in a flash to spray the scavengers. 

Since animals naturally belong in the wild, the government closed its two public zoos this year and freed the captives into reserves or rescue sanctuaries. There are still plenty of private wildlife centres, however, rehabilitating injured creatures or those seized from the illegal pet trade. At the Toucan Rescue Ranch near San Jose there’s another pro-animal rule in play: no selfies with animals. A video drums the message home that animals aren’t here for our amusement.

Sadly, some cages at the centre seem too small for their rescued creatures, and the guide tells me that money is too tight to enlarge them. I leave with mixed feelings, happy to have seen sloths, ocelots, parrots and monkeys getting better care than in their previous life, but dubious about their current conditions. Costa Rica does that to you if you look below the surface. While it’s far better at wildlife conservation than most, that elevates the standards that you judge it by. The residents themselves judge their own capital harshly, and several questioned why I was tagging a few days in San Jose onto my trip. As a city girl it seemed sensible, even though you go to Costa Rica for the nature, not the concrete.  

Overall San Jose is worth a couple of days, with nice restaurants in Barrio Escalante, lively free walking tours, and those sloths in the city. Equally interesting is the National Museum, housed in an army fortress that was made redundant when president Jose Figueres Ferrer abolished the army in 1949 and redirected the military budget into education and healthcare. Ferrer actually came to power through an army-led coup, Cespedes told us, and wanted to make sure nobody else could do the same.

The museum spans the history of the indigenous people through to the brutalities of the Spanish conquistadors, and on to the environmental problems of today. There’s also a big butterfly garden, and I gently touched a leaf in front of a blue morpho. As it stepped onto my finger and opened its brilliant wings I couldn’t help filming this beautiful creature. Agh, shame on me, I realised later — an animal selfie. When will we ever learn?