After seeing the adorable sloth on Costa Rican Tourism’s homepage, I am beyond excited for all the new wildlife that I’ll see during my visit there in two weeks. I can barely find the sloth in his designated exhibit in the Central Park Zoo, so I really hope that Costa Rica is simply RIFE with sloths – enough that I can manage to spot at least one in the leafy canopy.
Seeing animals in the wild, especially ones that aren’t as lame as the ones that we seem to have in the Northeastern US (sorry squirrels, you’re just not terribly impressive), is an awesome bonus when traveling…and sometimes even the point of the trip itself. As I’m looking back over what I’ve written just in this post, I’m realizing that so many of my traveling stories have to do with animals – so this will be Part 1 of a potentially 853920 Part series on awesome animal encounters. I’m trying to think of a witty name…853920 days of cuteness? icanhazcuteanimalswhiletraveling? The options are endless.
How can I not kick this off with Australia? I was there a few years ago, never having been in the Southern hemisphere before, and of course I could not get enough of all those pouchy marsupials. Dave and I went to a touristy park that’s just outside Sydney to see the kangaroos, wallabies and koalas. Seeing them all up close was pretty unique, but the place had the overall feel of…I don’t know, maybe a slightly cooler than average petting zoo? It’s definitely a requisite stop when you’re in Sydney so that you can take photos like this one here, but it left me a little unfulfilled. Not to worry though, because we had a road trip coming up and would be driving part of the Great Ocean Road (the coastal road on the Southeastern edge of the continent), passing through Otway National Park and hopefully seeing koalas and kangaroos in their natural habitat.
Never to be done outside of this petting zoo
Koala spotting is hard because they are really high up in trees so you’ll just be driving along until you realize “hey, why is that tree a little bumpy at the top?”. So the one observant person who has actually managed to spot a koala pulls their car over to the side and stares up at the tree. Then the next person driving along the road sees not the koala, but the person who stopped, and figures “there must be something awesome in that tree.” And they are right. Because the second you stop your car and start looking up at the trees you realize that there are in fact a lot of koalas just kinda chillin’ up there. So while photo ops are limited WITH the “bears” themselves, I loved just watching them slowly eat and slowly make their way from one branch to the next. We must have pulled over like that a dozen times, and each time it was no less rewarding.
Great Ocean Road, Australia
There’s a golf course along the Great Ocean Road that Lonely Planet recommended for kangaroo spotting at dusk. We decided to check it out, but really our expectations were quite low – these animals are fast, but also pretty dangerous, so it wasn’t like we were going to stand on the golf course with them, right? So, so wrong. That is absolutely what is done there. We pulled up to this course and the golfers were just finishing up their games for the day. Alongside them though, just hanging out on the green by the parking lot, was a handful of kangaroos (did you know a group of them is called a mob? Sounds safe, right?). We were immediately impressed, but we hadn’t seen nothin’ yet. As we started to wander around the course, we realized we’d seen the tip of the iceberg. On the fairway (that’s a golf term, right?) there were DOZENS of kangaroos just grazing. They were in sandtraps, they were by the 18th hole, they were driving golf carts (just that last one isn’t true). Nothing like seeing animals in their natural habitat…sorta.
Kangaroos in their natural habitat
So while I guess sloth spotting in Costa Rica is going to be a lot more difficult than strolling around a golf course, I am totally up for the challenge! Have you had any awesome and unique animal encounters while traveling (and more importantly do you have adorable pictures)??
a group of kangaroos should be called a mob. because they are terrifying.