Sloths and Snakes in Rio Celeste

Next stop in Costa Rica was the Rio Celeste region. Here, two clear rivers (the Quebrada Agria and Río Buena Vista) meet. One is slightly acidic, the other is rich in aluminosilicate particles, both thanks to the local volcanic activity. When they merge, the change in pH causes the particles to clump together in just the right size to scatter sunlight in the blue spectrum – the same principle that makes the sky appear blue. This results in the famous Rio Celeste, which is a striking bright blue.

But that’s not all the region is famous for, as I’d read that it’s also a sloth hotspot, with almost guaranteed sightings in the whole area. We were super excited to get there!

The journey by bus looked painless on paper. There’s a direct public bus from Liberia centre to Bijagua, the nearest town, which only took about 2.5 hours. The place I’d booked offered to collect us from the bus stop, and was about 25 min from Bijagua. Simple.

However, we got to the bus stop in Liberia 30 min before the bus and it was sold out… Standing room only… 😭 The next bus was 3 hours later, and I’d already agreed with the accommodation what time we’d be arriving… So we reluctantly bought the ticket for standing…. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty horrendous haha, the roads were very winding and we both had to use both hands to hold on the whole journey, we couldn’t relax at all. And standing up in the aisle, we could barely see out of the windows too, so we weren’t able to sightsee and look at the mountains and volcanoes along the way…

Still, we made it to Bijagua in good time and were collected by Miguel, the owner of Cabinas Cascada Rio Celeste.

Our accommodation was amazing, just 3 ensuite rooms underneath where the owners live – it was like a homestay, and they were both so helpful and friendly. They barely spoke any English, so it was a great opportunity to practice and learn more Spanish. The gardens at the place were also stunning and we saw so many different and unique birds just sat on the balcony overlooking them. I think I ticked off over 10 new bird species just in one hour here…

We had some food at the restaurant next door, which fortunately for us (well… I also looked it up before hand, and it was one of the reasons I booked this place!) had loads of vegan options, so we had one of the nicest (and biggest) vegan burgers we’ve had on this trip.

Then we headed out along the road, binoculars in hand. And although the road was quite busy with cars, there was still so much wildlife, just from the road! We saw the yellow-throated toucan – a HUGE toucan species, which was so cool, lots of new tanagers, hummingbirds, warblers and the red-lored Amazon Parrot.

We carried on walking to a public swimming spot in the river, just under the bridge. Some locals were swimming, but we hadn’t bought our swim stuff, so we just dipped our feet in.

The next morning we woke super early to watch the birds in the gardens, there were so many! Then we had a lovely breakfast before heading over to Tenorio National Park. This is where the famous Rio Celeste waterfall is, but unfortunately, you’re not allowed to swim in the national park. So it’s a hike to look at the river, volcano features and wildlife.

We got there bang on 8am when it opened and were one of the first into the park, so it was lovely and quiet. The trail was very well maintained and easy. The waterfall is quite near the start, but it was down a tonne of steps… Not bad on the way down, but a killer on the way back up. Still, it wasn’t that bad really. And it was stunning, and so inviting haha, I can see why they don’t let people swim here, as it would be PACKED I’m sure.

Theres only one trail here though, and it’s linear. It goes up past the waterfall then continues up to a hot spring, a lagoon and volcanic areas, then ends at the actual confluence of the rivers, so you can literally see the reaction happening and 2 clear rivers mixing to make the blue one, it’s so cool!!

Theres also supposed to be lots of wildlife and sloths in this park too, but we found the forest far too dense to see anything from the trail, it was pretty pathetic actually, we probably only saw 3 other birds/animals the whole day!! And not for lack of looking/trying. You know what we’re like too, we’re usually both very good at spotting stuff!

Although we did have an amazing interaction with a Keel-billed Motmot (our 5th Motmot species!), we saw him on the way in, perched in a tree. We stayed and watched a while whilst he hunted and feasted on the huge cicadas here. Gracefully plucking them from the air in mid-flight, then landing and absolutely bashing them in on the branch haha. There was a burrow in the dirt bank which we thought must be his home too, So on the way back down, we recognised the same spot… He wasn’t here, so we called him! Sure enough, he answered us, far off in the trees, we kept calling and then both of them – the male and female, showed up! We stood and watched them again. Whilst hoards and hoards of tourists (mostly American) traipsed past us totally uninterested…. It seemed most people only come here for the Instagram shot of the waterfall and don’t actually care about the wildlife…

In fact, we got very frustrated this day… In the morning, from 8-10am was quiet and peaceful and that’s when we saw the Motmots, some wrens, a few warblers etc, but after 10am, the park was swamped with noisy tourists, we could hear some of them from 100 metres away at times, they were THAT loud! And basically after that we saw nothing, or very little at least… (Apart from when we did our Motmot whispering haha).

We returned to the accommodation and Miguel asked us how it went, we must have looked disappointed and disheartened… “No sloths” 😞 so he offered to take us out along the road sloth spotting.

We headed back to the Metamorphosis restaurant first though, and as soon as we arrived the waiter was so excited, “guys I have something to show you…” He took us around into the garden between our accommodation and the restaurant… And there was a sloth in the tree there! Just a big ball of fur completely motionless haha, but still, it was a sloth!! Our first one! And literally next to us, in our gardens!

Completely stuffed, we met Miguel to go on a walk, and told him about the sloth we just saw. His wife was there and she told us yes this sloth is here a lot and has had 2 babies in fact! But Miguel said he could show us more…

They are usually in the same tree, a cecropia tree, which has wide open branches, which actually makes them quite easy to spot when you know how. So every time we saw one of those trees we scanned with the binocs… And sure enough, we saw 2 more to add to the one in our garden! 3 sloths in one night, not too bad!

The next day, we had planned to go back to Tenorio, but since the wildlife spotting was so slim, and actually we seemed to see WAY more (like everything) on the actual roads or in our garden, we decided instead to just walk around the roads, and headed up to a private walk on someone’s land, walking along the roads and through the village to get there.

It was $6 to get in, and we were the only ones here. We walked down through the forest and saw more Motmots! This time 2 different species at the same time! We saw both a keel-billed Motmot and a Broad-billed Motmot too, at one point, even sharing the same perch! But mostly they kept their distance, and did not seem to mind being in the same valley, or mind us being there, as they both continued to catch cicadas the whole time! That’s 6 species now!

We also saw loads of lizards, quite a few frogs too, and some creepy caterpillars. It was miles better than Tenorio!

Plus the trail ended at a beautiful swimming pool, where you were able to swim in the Rio Celeste. We’d taken our swimming stuff this time, but a combination of it being quite chilly, lots of bugs, and a bit spooky since we were the only ones here, meant we didn’t really get fully in the water, just dipped our legs in, and I floated about on a tube for a bit.

Then… I saw a snake swimming in the water, it was so close to us and crazy colours and patterns on its skin! We both stayed relatively calm, but then we saw another, and another, and another… 😂 We had no idea if it was venomous or what, so we swiftly got out of the water!!

Then as we were getting our clothes back on next to the river, we saw some keel billed toucans land in the tree above us. They were hard to see, but I managed to watch them for a bit through the binoculars.

This mini trail was definitely better!

We saw the Motmots again on our way back up, then headed back, once again to Metamorphosis for tasty vegan food, then back to the room.

That night we had planned to do a night walk with a friend of the owners near by, hopefully to spot a Tapir (like a big nocturnal pig with a long nose!), but whist we were at the restaurant a big storm rolled in. The thunder and lighting was cool to experience, but it rained so hard, we didn’t really want to go on the night walk…. But Miguel said it would be fine, we just kept in touch with the guy we were meeting, and if it carried on like this, we could cancel, but it should stop…..

And fortunately it did!! The rains stopped as quickly as they started and so we headed out to the trail at dusk. Miguel and his wife took us there, and then joined us on the trail with the guide too, which was nice!

First activity was sloth spotting. In the fading day light we saw loads, 5 in total I think, and one of them had a baby too! So cute, but none of them were particularly active. I mean, I know sloths are famously lazy and slow, but so far all the sloths we’d seen had been completely motionless, and hiding their face… But right at the end, in very low light, we finally saw a sloth face!

Then we headed to a frog pool, where we saw SO MANY red eye tree frogs, like that classic perfect tree frog, they are so beautiful, very leggy and clumsy, which was quite funny to watch, but very beautiful too. When they are sleeping they hide their hands and feet and close their eyes, they are like completely camouflaged, but as the night drew in, they started to wake up and show their full colours.

We also saw a blue jeans poison dart frog, a bull frog and a cross banded tree frog.

Then we went off in search of tapirs, snakes and spiders. Thankfully (for me) we didn’t see any spiders, but we did see a lot of weird and wonderful insects and a Kinkajou! A nocturnal arboreal mammal with very reflective eyes!

We walked around for a while with no joy on the tapir front… Then sadly we got to 7:30pm, the end of the tour, we were heading back to the start when… We saw the tapir!!

It was MASSIVE, it was way bigger than I expected based on photos I’d seen of the animal. I thought they would have been small and nimble, living in these dense forests, but no, it was huge!

This one was pregnant and so had a tracking/monitoring collar on it, apparently in this region all pregnant females are monitored, and then after as well to keep an eye on the baby, so they end up wearing the collar for up to 2 years at a time!

We were so chuffed we got to see this amazing creature! What a great day!!

Everything was perfect! Until we got in bed that night and both found ticks on us!! We don’t know how long they’d been on us, but since I had a shower before the night walk, we think it was the night walk. The one on me I felt trying to bite me, and hadn’t fully latched on yet. Neither of them were big either, so obviously they hadn’t fed on us yet… But we still got worried about the tick diseases they potentially carry. Fortunately, it’s just like flu and fever symptoms, so we’ll just have to look out for those over the next weeks and fingers crossed everything is ok ☺️

In the morning, I got up early again to sit and bird watching in the garden, and I saw a weird hovering insect feeding on a purple flowering bush… Wait… No…. It was flying like a hummingbird , but surely it wasn’t, I called Dave over and we watched it together. It was definitely a micro hummingbird, with a white and green body. We identified it as a snowcap hummingbird, which turns out to be ANOTHER holy-grail bird species I didn’t even know about!!

What an amazing time in Rio Celeste! After breakfast, Miguel dropped us at the bus stop in Katira too, one could catch our next bus. The couple who owned this place really made the stay for us, they were so helpful and we would have been lost without their generosity driving us to places. We are really starting to feel the kindness of the Costa Rican people now, and their love for nature. Miguel has lived in the area for 50 years he said, and I still caught him with his binoculars looking into the garden every morning. And clearly he knew where all the local sloths were haha. It seems Costa Ricans are brought up with a strong connection to nature, they feel part of it, not separate to it, and it really shows.