The sweet smiling face of the Costa Rican sloth is rapidly becoming the iconic symbol of the country's amazing rainforest wildlife. If you would like an easy ride to see these cuddly looking animals at the forest edge, stopping all along the way to spot Toucans, Howler monkeys, iguanas, and colorful frogs, then this tour is the perfect tour for you.
You'll be picked up from your hotel and driven in a modern, air-conditioned van down beautiful back country roads visiting the places your knowledgeable guide has found filled with sloth families, colorful birdlife, reptiles, and monkeys. At each stop, you'll exit the van and within just a few steps look up to see one of the many tropical animals making Costa Rica famous. Sloths are slow moving and well camouflaged, so the aid of a guide with a high-tech spotting scope ensures your opportunity to experience the wonder of this cheerful looking creature.
Special adaptors can allow you to capture close-up photos with your cell phone attached to the scope. An average tour hosts 5 people with a maximum number of 8. If you are traveling in a group larger than 8 people, additional vans with extra guides can follow to keep you together for viewing. The van will make many stops to show you wildlife in their natural habitats all within easy reach of the van, excellent for families and senior citizens alike.
You'll be searching out both 2-toed and 3-toed sloths. Although similar, they have distinct differences. The 2-toed Sloth, being nocturnal, can be found sleeping high up in the tree tops. More active during daytime hours, the 3-toed Sloth sloooowly moves through the branches happily eating leaves, often with a young sloth hugging on for the ride. Affixed with permanent smiles, sloths easily steal the hearts of those that watch them. Did you know they are related to the anteater?
Your guide will also be stopping to show you some of Costa Rica's abundant birdlife, such as the Keel-billed Toucan, with its rainbow colored bill almost as big as its body. The wet rainforest surrounding the Arenal/La Fortuna area hosts a diverse number of interesting birds including the Great Carrasow, Crested Guan, Oropendula, Umbrella bird, Red Lored Parrot plus a variety of beautiful Motmots, Trogans, Tanagers, and Honeycreepers. You might hear a Laughing Falcon or come across other birds of prey like majestic hawks or owls.
But that's not all! You'll go to see giant iguanas with their primitive dinosaur like bodies. And your guide will be looking for the colorful blue jean frog, the common name for a poison dart frog that looks like it is wearing a pair of blue jeans! Often families of Howler Monkeys are climbing around through the trees that merit a stop along the way.
You'll arrive at the Arenal Oasis and Wildlife Refuge to have a bite to eat. There are two Sloth tours, one at 6am and one at 2pm. If you are on the morning tour your excursion will include breakfast. If you are on the afternoon tour, you'll be treated to a hearty afternoon snack with beverage. The rainforest restaurant is surrounded by feeders, allowing you to observe and take photos of birds, including hummingbirds, as you enjoy your meal. Here, you can stretch your legs on a short optional 20-minute hike, before being driven back to your hotel. The tour includes a certified guide, breakfast or afternoon snack, bottled water, admission fee, and round-trip transportation to hotels in the greater La Fortuna area. Total time of tour is approximately 3 hours depending on hotel location.
The Sloth Tour is available from Arenal, Arenal Zone 2, and Arenal Zone 3
Latitude: N 10° 27' 39.89"
Longitude: W 84° 39' 38.54"
09/01/2023
Even though it rained the entre tour, we were still able to see some animals. The guides went out of their way to find them
08/21/2023
The guide we had was incredible
08/09/2023
Our tour guide was phenomenal; very positive and informative!
07/29/2023
The guide was very knowledgeable and good at finding the animals. It was easy transportation and very accessible.
07/27/2023
Unbelievable! We saw 13 sloths!! And 2 babies. Just amazing experience--tourguide was fantastic.
07/23/2023
We saw lots of sloths!
07/18/2023
We managed to see eight sloths, including one baby. Mercedes and the driver (Luis?) were fabulous.
06/30/2023
Unforgettable! Our guide was as excited as we were!
06/27/2023
Big surprise on this one. Very worth doing. I was dubious about riding in a van to find sloths but it was SO fun and you get out a lot to see them. If you don't do the tour, you are simply not gauranteed to see sloths in Costa Rica. They are hard to spot. That said, we saw them with a baby, climbing. It was amazing. The place they bring you after for empanadas and fruit is so quaint as well. It's a really great excursion. I was really pleasantly surprised.
06/18/2023
Our guide was called Hawkeye for a reason. She spotted the sloths.
06/17/2023
I loved this tour. We spotted 10 sloths, two toucans, and a Jesus Christ lizard! We had an excellent guide who was extremely knowledgeable and explained the nature and behavior of sloths
06/15/2023
We enjoyed our tour even though we weren't able to get to one of the places as planned due to not being able to cross a road that had been washed out by the rain from the day prior. Our guides were flexible and took us around the town and we still saw lots of sloths. The breakfast was delicious!
05/22/2023
Saw lots of sloths-fantastic
05/01/2023
Saw a variety of sloths, snack at the restaurant was good, fun tour!
04/30/2023
The knowledge of the guides (Edson and Andres) was remarkable and so was the visual with the spotting scope.
04/15/2023
The tour was great, I was expecting a little more out in the wild than in town areas, still we were happy.
03/22/2023
Unfortunately it had rained the night before so didn’t see as many sloths and toucans as they say they usually do but no fault of your operators. They tried. Breakfast after tour was delicious and we saw beautiful motmots there
02/28/2023
Another excellent tour also run by Arenal Oasis. We saw and photographed lots of sloths as well as many birds including three types of Toucan and a huge iguana. Highly recommended!
02/02/2023
Guides were fabulous and very knowledgable!
12/25/2022
We had a good time and saw a lot of animals.
10/31/2022
Not a great tour because the sloths were not particularly active or visible up close. Not the fault of the guide whi tried very hard to find active sloths. Knowledgeable guide.
08/02/2022
The tour guides were informative and gave us lots of photo opportunities .They showed us a variety of toucans, a few three-toed sloths, and a howler monkey with an albino baby. They also coordinated around the rain very well. My only disappointment about the sloth tour is that the tour guide mentioned going to see some two-toed sloths at the end of the tour but then dropped off at the hotel instead. I wish it had been communicated why we didn't get to see the two-toed sloth.
07/27/2022
We did get to see sloths!
05/15/2022
Luis and Trino were very good. We saw many sloths and felt it was very worthwhile
02/05/2022
Great guides that took us around town and we got to see several sloths as well as howler monkeys and various birds
01/28/2022
I hoped to see more sloths from close by but there is not much you can do about it
01/24/2022
The guide and driver had the eye and knowledge of the area! We quickly located a Mom and baby low to the ground, she climbed right in front of us. We not only saw our sloth, but monkeys and many exotic birds! They stopped, set up cameras and helped us capture the experience.
12/25/2021
The guides were great but the tour was very disjointed. We saw a few sloths and stayed for a long time just looking at them. Not really a tour.
12/12/2021
We had a great time on the Sloth Tour. We where able to see 9 different sloths. And we where able to get some really good pictures.
11/30/2021
Loved the tour!
11/12/2021
What a great way to start your day! Got to see the area and sloths. Also saw some beautiful birds, iguanas and frogs! Marcus was the guide he was a lot of fun. He definitely loves his job. We had a nice breakfast afterwards
10/26/2021
We saw 6 sloths, a keel-billed toucan, a hawk and even howler monkeys!
10/20/2021
Jaime was amazing at talking to us and giving us so much information about sloths and Toucans. I can’t believe they spot those sloths in the trees like they do! It was so much fun.
08/02/2021
Amazing. Saw sloths and toucans too!
06/30/2021
Unfortunately it rained very hard so there’s nothing we could do about that. The guides were knowledgeable and kind. I was expecting to see sloths a little closer but they really couldn’t be seen without telescopes.
06/02/2021
Loved the guide!
03/01/2020
Tour guide was great and the experience was great. Very happy.
02/21/2020
The breakfast after the tour was a huge surprize, loved having a wonderfully cook breakfast with the birds within a few feet of us!
12/29/2019
We enjoyed the Sloth Tour immensely. Our guide and driver were excellent! They found many opportunities for us to observe sloths, toucans and a poisonous frog. We appreciated their setting up a scope so that we could take great pictures with our cell phones. Not only were they very informative, but their enthusiasm was awesome.
12/28/2019
Isaac was very knowledgeable and helpful.
12/26/2019
Our guide found lots of sloths as well as toucans near an active papaya farm, the snack at the end of the tour was nice
12/22/2019
We initially thought this would be a hiking tour rather than being taken around in a minivan but we did get to see many sloths!
11/13/2019
Francisco & Alvaro were awesome, and we saw so many sloths, even a mother with her baby!
11/03/2019
Both the tour guide and the driver went out of their way to check for sloths in all known locations. We saw 5 sloths (one two toed sloth, rest three toed), a Blue Jeans poison dart frog, a howler money and stopped for coffee and a snack at the cutest B & B. The people who owned the property where the sloths were located were very kind in letting us walk over to where they were. On the way home, the driver went by the street where the Toucans are often spotted and we saw two yellow billed toucans. The tour was nicely paced and they were very kind and made sure I got great photos.
10/06/2019
It was really hot this day which is unavoidable
10/03/2019
Would have liked to see more wildlife. Lunch in the forest was wonderful.
09/29/2019
Would it be possible to get closer to the sloths?
09/19/2019
These guys were awesome
08/23/2019
We saw sloths, birds, and frogs. This was exactly what was promised. It was a nice tour and the guides were great. We also really enjoyed the setting of the breakfast after the sloth tour.
08/07/2019
Even though it rained we saw many sloths! The staff really took their time to make sure everyone got a good view and as many pictures as they wanted. They even had umbrellas for everyone. Our snack was delicious too!
08/02/2019
Far exceeded expectations. I will never forget this tour!!!
07/23/2019
fabulous tour! our favorite
07/21/2019
We were very fortunate to see a sloth with a baby .
07/08/2019
We didn't realise at first that this is a drive tour rather than a walking one. The first stop was a bit underwhelming -- roadside scrub. But the second was much better and there were good sightings of three sloths. Also enjoyed seeing the blue jeans frog. The advice from PTW was that 'snacks' were included, but this does actually include a full breakfast afterwards -- we recommend you update the advice so that people realise that this is better value for money than it looks.
07/02/2019
The guides were great. Really liked them. The first area they took us wasn't as exotic as we expected. Felt like we just pulled over on side of road and walked into some woods. But we did see sloths and blue jean frog. Last place they took us for a snack was cool and food was good.
06/15/2019
We got 8 sloths including a two-toed and a baby! Great job by the guides.
06/11/2019
Guides were exceptional
06/03/2019
My #1 goal for this trip was to see a sloth. Not only did we see several, we saw one very low in a tree awake and eating breakfast.
05/19/2019
rained all tour long, but the tour company did the best they could with the weather being so bad, anyway great tour
04/15/2019
If you definitely want to see Sloth in Arenal area, you should definitely do this tour (we also did a combo tour that combined 4 totally different other locations and did not see Sloth at any other location even though we had great guide, so if not for this tour we would have missed out on seeing Sloth in Arenal area, though eventually we saw many more and closer sloth in Manuel Antonio area).
03/11/2019
We saw plenty of sloths and birds. Nice morning was had by all.
01/24/2019
So boring. If the guide didn’t have a scope we would not have seen a thing.
01/09/2019
The guides had a great personality, helped us take pictures, and were very knowledgeable about the sloths. the Arenal Oasis stop at teh end was a very nice bonus with the food which was delicious and the lazy bird watching.
01/07/2019
Loved that it was a small group and that the guide had the high-powered scope for us to take pictures. Otherwise, they would have been just dots up in the trees.
12/21/2018
The best tour we did!
12/12/2018
This one turned out great!
12/06/2018
Great guide. They did their best to show and find sloths. To our surprise the tour also included bird watching as well as coffee and food!
11/30/2018
Oscar and Ramo were excellent guides, very personable and knowledgeable! My favorite tour from our visit to Costa Rica! Loved stopping at the restaurant to see all the birds!! We told everyone we met in Costa Rica how great our tour was and will continue to tell friends and family back in the US!
09/06/2018
The team worked really hard to see sloths!
08/17/2018
Oscar and his driver (Alejandro?) were great. Saw lots of sloths, lots of birds. 2 species of toucan made up for none at the waterfall. All of the birds at the bird feeding / snack stop were great.