…Sloth’s do.  Sloths are slow moving animals.  They live on leaves with very low energy content, so they have adapted to conserve energy.  On a hot and humid day in Porto Limon Suzi and I decided to take a lesson from the sloth. 

We could have gone done a zip line, a skywalk through the rain forest canopy, taken a canal tour, gone to the beach, or taken a train ride.  We passed on all of that, we had done the canals and the train before.  We settled on sitting in a café named after the train “La Maquina 55” and walking through town, spending a lot of time in a city park looking for… sloths.

We are used to looking for movement when spotting whales, sealions or bears.  Sloths do not move, at least not perceptively.  Just outside the port there is a park bordered by the port on one side, the beach on another and the town on two sides.  Kids come up to you and offer to “find” you a sloth in the park trees.  Since they don’t move it isn’t hard for them, they were the same place they were last hour, or perhaps last week.  He showed us a mama sloth with a baby and the papa sloth in an adjacent tree.  At the rate they move I wondered how they have sex.

After sloth spotting Anthony wanted to show us some Iguana, he was sure he could find some, but they move, and camouflage well in the trees.  Anthony failed but I tipped him anyway.

We did see an owl in the park and an egret on the beach. 

Our walk took us to the local market.  The music coming from the stores was a cacophony of styles, hip hop, reggae, salsa, and cumbia.  You could tell which shops catered to tourists; they played calypso.

And for that beer at the “Café La Maquina 55.” The waiter was an American, he asked us where we were from.  We told him “Alaska.”  He pulled out his driver’s license – Alaska.  He was from Utqiagvik, the city formally known as Barrow.  Well, if you faced another winter in Utqiagvik you may want to find some heat in Costa Rica too.  The heat was about the same as in Falmouth but the humidity was 15% higher, past Suzi’s beer threshold so she enjoyed one with me, forgoing a Coke, even though it had real sugar.

On our way back to the ship we went back to the park, and I found my Iguanas. 

Then it was through the crafts market near the ship, which has installed hand washing stations since the last time I had been in Port Limon,

We walked past a busking calypso-reggae band.  

On the ship I went aft to take some pictures of town from 10 stories up.  Last time we were here we walked to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart; a colonial building surrounded by a poured concrete brutalist structure. 

You can see more of this church at the post below.

Brutalist or Welcoming? The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.

As I stood on the deck taking pictures, I listened to the band busking on the dock.  They have a tighter playlist than is healthy for their own mental health.