The team meets a sloth

This is Kaisa and Christoffer's third visit to Costa Rica, and on both previous trips we've been a bit disappointed not to spot the sloth, one of the country's most characteristic and adorable wild animals. Lina, who generally loves everything furry, had previously visited Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize, which also belong to the sloth's habitat, but the elusive beasts had managed to avoid her, so she was just as keen to see one.

So there we were, pushing our bikes in heavy head wind on an endless hill, and I literally mean endless, up from Tilaran. We were extremely nervous about the upcoming day: how big would the hills be? Would we even make it to Nuevo Arenal before sunset? Would the storm that seemed to be calming down come back with even stronger winds and rain?

Kaisa was leading the troops, as her bike is quite a lot lighter to push uphill. Suddenly a big tourist bus stops on the roadside in front of her and a man runs out. ”Look! There's a sloth!” ”Where?” ”Right there in that tree! It's a two-toed sloth and it's sleeping!” ”Ooh! I can see it! It's so cute! Thank you so much!”

A small impromptu session of sloth-watching followed, with an entire busload of tourists standing in the middle of the road and taking photos, the bus parked in a narrow curve in a double yellow line area, and a police car driving by with the polices happily waving at the tourists. The travel guide who had spotted the sloth and shown it to Kaisa (before all the tourists in his own group could make it to the right tree) wished us good luck and then climbed back in the bus, which continued uphill. And so did we, with the bikes feeling a bit lighter than before.