Tortuguero National Park is a remote Caribbean rainforest haven in Costa Rica renowned for its labyrinthine waterway network nesting sea turtles and extraordinary biodiversity making it one of the most captivating eco-tourism destinations in all of Central America.
Costa Rica: The Jaguar Rescue Centre
🌅 A Caribbean Morning & Our First Sloth
We woke to a morning that was, frankly, showing off. The kind of morning that makes you feel slightly guilty for all the ones you slept through back home. Our apartment sat on the ground floor of the Villas Del Caribe, and the main feature — the pièce de résistance, if you will — was a large patio window that framed the Caribbean Sea like a living painting. The water was that particular shade of blue you only ever see on postcards and think must be touched up. It wasn’t. It was about thirty feet away.
Through the patio doors was a decent-sized deck, partially covered, furnished with a couple of plastic loungers that had clearly seen better decades, and a circular stone table and chairs set that looked like it had wandered in from a garden centre in Dorset. Charming, in a budget sort of way.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I was dimly aware that back in England, it was sleeting sideways in a car park in Basildon. That thought alone made the whole thing feel rather magnificent.
That morning, I’d arranged for us to visit the Jaguar Rescue Centre — a wildlife rehabilitation sanctuary on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, near Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, which has been rescuing and rehabilitating injured and orphaned animals since 2008. As it happened, it was roughly 200 metres from where we were staying, so punctuality, for once, wasn’t going to be anyone’s problem.
As we waited for the tour to start, we got our first proper look at a sloth. A three-toed sloth, to be precise — the Bradypus variegatus, if you want to get technical about it, though I certainly didn’t. He was hanging high in the canopy above us, doing what sloths do best: absolutely nothing, with magnificent commitment. Costa Rica is one of the few places on earth where spotting a sloth in the wild is a genuine possibility, and there he was, first morning, first hour. First box ticked.
We were split into groups and handed over to our guides. All of them volunteers, which tells you something rather lovely about the place. We drew Max from Colorado — and if there’s a God, he was smiling on us that morning. Max was one of those rare people who could hold a group of strangers in the palm of his hand just by talking. Brilliant storyteller. The only slight issue was that a fair portion of his material involved taking the mickey out of the British, which, as a Londoner of a certain vintage, I felt I had to absorb with dignity. I managed it, mostly.
Max told us the story of the JRC, and it’s quite a tale.
The man who started it all was Sandro Alviani, an Italian herpetologist — that’s someone who studies reptiles and amphibians, since I had to look it up too. Sandro had spent years criss-crossing Europe and beyond, cataloguing things with scales and sticky feet, and from 1987 onwards kept returning to Costa Rica as part of his research. Ten years of that and he’d had enough of going home. In 1997, he packed up and moved permanently to a plot of land on the southern Caribbean coast, near Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. A man who clearly knew a good thing when he saw it.
Then, in 2001, fate turned up wearing a Catalan accent. Encar Garcia, a primatologist from Catalonia, arrived in Puerto Viejo on holiday, met Sandro, and they fell in love. It was only afterwards that they discovered they’d both spent several years working at Barcelona Zoo at exactly the same time and had somehow never once bumped into each other. In a city of five million, perhaps not so surprising. Still, the universe has a sense of humour.
Encar had carried a dream for years — to run an animal rescue centre. And it was the locals who effectively made that dream happen. When word got around that two serious animal experts had settled in the area, people started turning up at their door with injured creatures. A bird here, a monkey there. What do you say? No? They didn’t.
What followed was the kind of mission creep that would give any sensible person pause. The animals kept coming. Babies needed feeding through the night. Room by room, their house was quietly surrendered to the cause — enclosures appeared in the garden, volunteers were recruited, land was purchased. By degrees, a home became a rescue centre.
Today the Jaguar Rescue Centre covers around 22,000 square metres and can temporarily house up to 160 animals at any one time, with modifications being made constantly as new residents arrive with new requirements. It is, in every sense, a living, breathing, permanently unfinished project.
Our first stop was to meet a margay — a small wild cat, spotted like a miniature leopard, not much bigger than a large domestic cat, and built for life high in the rainforest canopy. Solitary, nocturnal, and almost never seen in the wild. This one had been at the JRC for thirteen years. In that time, various birds and small creatures had made the catastrophic mistake of perching on the wire mesh of his enclosure. He’d pull them through. Hence the name: Diablo. The Devil. An attempt was made to release him into a section of rainforest over a hundred kilometres away. He came back. And he wasn’t gentle about it on the way.
Next on the tour were a pair of brown boobies — which, yes, is their actual name, and yes, every single person on the tour sniggered, because we’re all twelve apparently. Their names were Dada and Bobo, both rescue birds with the sort of backstories that make you feel quietly terrible about humanity.
Bobo had arrived at the Jaguar Rescue Centre with four fishing hooks lodged inside his body. Four. The staff had successfully removed them all, which must have taken some doing, and eventually released him back into the wild — which is, after all, the whole point of the place. The problem was that Bobo didn’t quite grasp the concept of freedom. He kept gravitating back towards the local fishermen, which, given his history with fishing equipment, seemed like a spectacularly poor life choice. Eventually, fearing what might happen to him next, the centre made him a permanent resident. You can hardly blame them.
Dada’s story was simpler but no less final. She’d come in with a fractured wing that had healed badly enough to ground her permanently. No more flying. So she too had found herself a full-time berth at the centre — which, all things considered, wasn’t the worst outcome.
The Jaguar Rescue Centre, it turned out, was something of a sloth hospital with ambitions. Sloths are among the most frequent arrivals — tumbling out of trees, tangled in power lines, separated from their mothers — and the JRC has become rather expert at patching them up and, where possible, sending them back into the canopy.
There are six species of sloth in the world, and Costa Rica is home to two of them, which felt like a reasonable allocation. First, there’s the brown-throated three-toed sloth — the one you’ll most likely spot dozing in a tree while you’re trying to photograph it — and second, the Hoffmann’s two-fingered sloth, which is considerably harder to find because it only bothers coming out at night. Sensible, really.
Despite looking broadly similar to the untrained eye — mine, for instance — the two species are quite different once you know what you’re looking at. The two-fingered variety is nocturnal, sports two digits on each hand and three on each foot, and has a distinctive pig-like nose with hair that runs from blond to brown. The three-toed sloth, by contrast, is diurnal — active during the day — has three digits on both hands and feet, and is immediately recognisable by what the guides cheerfully call the pura vida smile: a dark marking across its mouth that makes it look permanently, serenely pleased with itself, which given that it spends its entire life hanging upside down eating leaves, seems about right. Its coat is a salt-and-pepper mix of black, grey and white.
The centre has one two-fingered sloth who lives there permanently. She’s a young female with a genetic condition that has left her far smaller than a normal adult sloth — too small to survive in the wild, so the JRC is her home for life. We got to see her up close, which was a privilege.
Sloths, we learned, eat leaves, twigs and buds. Having no incisors, they trim their food by pressing their lips together with considerable purpose. Their metabolism is so extraordinarily slow that digesting a meal takes them several days — something I found both fascinating and, after a large lunch, oddly relatable. They descend from the trees precisely once a week to defecate, which by any measure is an impressive level of personal efficiency.
Here’s something I hadn’t expected: the snakes at the Jaguar Rescue Centre are the only animals in the whole place that aren’t actually rescues. They’ve been brought in deliberately — not for our entertainment, though I’ll admit they were entertaining — but to educate locals, and particularly children, about the snakes they might encounter living alongside them every day. Which, when you think about it, seems like rather important information to have.
Costa Rica has 140 species of snake. Twenty-three of them are venomous, which is the sort of statistic that makes you walk slightly differently through the undergrowth. They fall broadly into two camps: sea snakes and coral snakes in one group, and the vipers — the largest category — in the other.
Our guide Max explained how to identify a viper, which felt like genuinely useful life advice. Triangular head, shaped like a pizza slice. Vertical slit eyes. Two small facial openings that look vaguely like a second nose. Honestly, if something ticks all three boxes, just leave it alone.
JRC had two vipers on display — a pit viper, and the rather brilliantly named eyelash viper, which does indeed appear to have eyelashes. Sadly, they were missing the star of the show: the fer-de-lance. The most common, most aggressive viper in Costa Rica, and the one responsible for the majority of snakebite incidents across Central America. Probably just as well it wasn’t there.
The second-to-last stop on the tour brought us to the birds. There were several parrots going about their noisy, chaotic business, and a toucan who, by all accounts, was dealing with some genuine psychological issues — which, frankly, I found oddly relatable. Then there were the Great Green Macaws. These are birds with a serious situation on their hands. They live exclusively along Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, and there are reckoned to be only around 1,500 left in the wild, making them critically endangered. Max, our guide, told us about a sanctuary just south of Puerto Viejo called Ara Manzanillo, which runs a dedicated breeding programme specifically for these birds. The encouraging news was that it’s open to visitors. We mentally filed that one away as something worth looking into — though, knowing us, we’d probably forget by lunchtime.
We finished our tour with the spider monkeys, and what a way to end it. These extraordinary creatures are the acrobats of the Central American jungle — all impossibly long limbs and fluid, fearless movement through the canopy. What makes them remarkable, beyond the sheer theatre of watching them swing about, is their prehensile tail, which functions effectively as a fifth limb, gripping branches with the kind of confidence I reserve for a decent handrail. They have no thumbs, which sounds like the setup to a joke, but is apparently no great handicap when you’re built like nature’s own climbing frame.
The Jaguar Rescue Centre had four permanent spider monkey residents — permanent being the operative word, because none of them were going back to the wild. Each one had spent its earlier life either crammed into some wretched domestic situation as a pet, or pressed into service posing for tourist photographs on the streets. Mercifully, that particular trade is now illegal throughout Costa Rica, though one suspects it took rather longer than it should have.
Planning Your Visit to the Jaguar Rescue Center
🦥 Jaguar Rescue Centre
| 📍 Location | Playa Chiquita, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Limón Province, Costa Rica | 🕖 Opening Times | Monday–Saturday; tours at 9:30 AM & 11:30 AM (public); 2:00 PM (private) |
| 🌐 Website | jaguarrescue.foundation | 📞 Phone | +506 2750-0710 |
| info@jaguarrescue.foundation | ⏱️ Tour Duration | Approx. 90 minutes |
🎟️ Entry Fees
| Public Tour (per person) | Children Under 10 | Private Tour (per person) |
|---|---|---|
| $25–27 USD | Free | $75 USD |
ℹ️ Cash preferred, as card machines can be unreliable. All entry fees go directly to animal care and rehabilitation. Advance booking recommended as tours fill quickly.
🚗 How to Get There
To Puerto Viejo de Talamanca from San José
| Method | Duration | Approx. Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🚌 Public Bus | 5–6 hrs | ~$10 USD | MEPE buses from Terminal Atlántico Norte, San José. Direct to Puerto Viejo |
| 🚐 Shared Shuttle | 4–5 hrs | ~$50 USD | Door-to-door; operators include Caribe Shuttle and Interbus |
| 🚗 Rental Car | 4–5 hrs | From ~$60/day | Via Route 32 then Route 36 |
| ✈️ Domestic Flight | ~2.5–3 hrs total | $70–150 USD | Fly San José to Limón (SANSA Airlines), then 45-min taxi to Puerto Viejo |
Best Time to Visit Costa Rica
🌞 Dry Season (December to April) — High Season
Costa Rica’s dry season runs from December to April and is widely regarded as the most popular time to visit. The weather across most of the country is reliably warm and sunny, with low humidity and minimal rainfall making it ideal for outdoor activities, beach holidays, and exploring national parks. The Pacific Coast — including destinations such as Manuel Antonio, Tamarindo, and the Nicoya Peninsula — is at its most accessible and attractive during these months, with calm seas ideal for surfing, snorkelling, and boat trips. The Central Valley and highlands enjoy clear skies, making the volcano landscapes and cloud forests particularly stunning. December and January bring a festive atmosphere, whilst February and March are often considered the absolute peak of the season. April marks the tail end of the dry season, still largely pleasant but with the first hints of rain beginning to return.
Wildlife watching is excellent throughout this period, with animals more visible around water sources as vegetation thins. Humpback whales can be spotted off the Pacific coast, and sea turtle nesting begins to pick up towards March and April.
The trade-off for all this good weather is crowds and cost. Hotels, tours, and flights tend to be at their most expensive, and popular attractions can feel busy. Booking well in advance — ideally three to six months ahead — is strongly recommended.
What to pack: Lightweight, breathable clothing in natural fabrics, a high-factor sun cream (SPF 50+), a wide-brimmed hat, UV-protective sunglasses, sturdy walking sandals and light trainers, a reusable water bottle, a compact day rucksack, insect repellent, a light layer or thin fleece for highland evenings, and a small dry bag for beach excursions.
🌧️ Green Season / Rainy Season (May to November) — Low Season
The green season, as it is affectionately known locally, spans May to November and coincides with Costa Rica’s rainy season. Whilst this deters many visitors, it rewards those who travel during this period with lush, vivid landscapes, fewer tourists, significantly lower prices, and a more authentic experience of the country. Rainfall typically arrives in short, sharp afternoon downpours rather than all-day drizzle, leaving mornings largely clear and perfectly workable for sightseeing and activities.
The Caribbean Coast — including Puerto Viejo and Tortuguero — operates on a different weather calendar and is often drier during the months of September and October when the Pacific side is at its wettest. This makes the Caribbean an excellent option during those months. The rainforest is at its most spectacular during the green season; waterfalls are full and thundering, rivers run high, and the wildlife is extraordinarily active. The months of July and August offer a brief dry spell known as the veranillo or little summer, during which Pacific-coast conditions temporarily improve.
This is an excellent period for white-water rafting, as rivers are swollen and fast-moving. Turtle nesting on both coasts reaches its peak — particularly at Tortuguero, where green turtles nest in enormous numbers between July and October. Surfers will find some of the best swells of the year along the Pacific coast during this season.
What to pack: A quality waterproof jacket or rain poncho, quick-dry clothing, waterproof hiking boots with good grip, waterproof covers for bags and rucksacks, a dry bag or waterproof pouches for electronics, extra pairs of socks, insect repellent, anti-fungal foot powder, a travel umbrella, and a light fleece for cooler highland evenings. A dry bag for camera equipment is especially advisable.
🌤️ Shoulder Seasons (Late April / Early May and November)
The shoulder periods — roughly late April into May, and the month of November — represent an increasingly popular sweet spot for experienced travellers. The weather in late April and early May retains much of the dry season’s charm whilst prices begin to ease and crowds thin noticeably. November is similarly transitional: the rains are winding down across the Pacific side, landscapes remain beautifully green, and accommodation and tour costs drop sharply after the October lows.
These months offer a genuine best-of-both-worlds experience for those with flexibility. Wildlife activity is high, national parks feel less overrun, and there is often a greater sense of ease in navigating the country — from roads to restaurants.
What to pack: A versatile layering system suitable for both sun and rain, a lightweight waterproof jacket, a combination of quick-dry and breathable clothing, good-quality walking shoes, sun cream, insect repellent, a hat that doubles as sun and rain protection, and a mid-size rucksack suitable for day trips and overnight excursions.
🗻 Visiting the Highlands and Volcanoes
The Central Highlands — home to Monteverde, Arenal, and the Poás and Irazú volcanoes — follow a slightly different pattern from the coasts. Cloud forests such as Monteverde are at their most atmospheric and enveloped in mist during the wetter months, creating an ethereal, primordial quality. However, they can be quite cold and damp, particularly at altitude. Arenal Volcano is most visible during the dry season, as cloud cover frequently obscures its summit during the rainy months. Those travelling to highland areas at any time of year should be prepared for cooler temperatures, often 10–18°C at altitude, and the possibility of sudden mist and light rain regardless of season.
What to pack for highlands: Warm layers including a fleece or lightweight down jacket, waterproof outer layer, long trousers, sturdy waterproof hiking boots, warm socks, a hat and light gloves for evenings, and a headtorch for early morning wildlife walks.
🐢 Wildlife and Natural Events by Season
Costa Rica’s remarkable biodiversity means there is always something extraordinary happening in nature, regardless of when you visit.
December to April: Dry forests thin out, making wildlife easier to spot. Humpback whales are present off the Pacific coast (particularly January to March). Mating season for many bird species begins. The scarlet macaw is highly visible in the Osa Peninsula.
May to July: Olive Ridley and Leatherback turtles begin nesting on the Pacific coast. Cloud forests are vibrant with amphibians and insects. Birdwatching is exceptional as migratory species pass through.
July to October: Leatherback, Green, and Hawksbill turtles nest on the Caribbean coast, with Tortuguero offering extraordinary night-time nesting experiences. Humpback whales return to the Pacific (July to November). Baby sea turtles hatch in August and September.
October to December: Whale sharks can be spotted around Cocos Island. The Caribbean coast dries out, making it one of the best times to visit the east. Migratory birds begin arriving from North America.
📋 Season-at-a-Glance Summary Table
🌍 Overall Best Time to Visit Costa Rica
For most travellers visiting Costa Rica for the first time, the period from mid-December to March represents the optimal window. The weather is at its most consistently dry and sunny, the full range of activities and national parks are accessible, and the country is buzzing with energy. Those who prioritise value for money, solitude, and a more immersive experience of the rainforest are very well served by visiting between June and August, when the veranillo provides a brief respite from the rains and prices are meaningfully lower. For the discerning traveller who wants the best balance of good weather, reasonable cost, and thinner crowds, November stands out as a particularly well-kept secret — the rains are easing, the landscapes remain lush, and the country feels unhurried. Costa Rica rewards visitors in every season; the question is simply one of priorities.
Other things to do whilst in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca
If you are looking for some adventure, Puerto Viejo offers so much: white water rafting the famous Pacuare River, off-road ATV driving, canopy zip lining through the rainforest, horseback riding on the beach or into the jungle, cycling, fishing, surfing, boogie boarding, stand-up paddling. You really won’t find it hard to make your time in Puerto Viejo full of excitement!
There are many animal and jungle tours in the area. If you are up to having up-close experience of the jungle at night, your local guide can take you into the forest after sunset, where you can experience the wildlife and noises of the jungle at dark! Or you may wish to spot Leatherback turtles nesting when visiting the local Gandoca National Park.
Here are some ideas of things to do during your stay in Puerto Viejo.
1. Ara Manzanillo
Ara Manzanillo is a non-profit conservation organisation based near the village of Manzanillo on Costa Rica’s southern Caribbean coast. It was formally established in 2012, though the work behind it began around 2010, when a small group of conservationists started a programme to reintroduce the Great Green Macaw — a critically endangered parrot — back into the wild. The species had suffered a steep decline due to habitat loss and the illegal pet trade, and by the time efforts began in earnest, only a few dozen breeding pairs remained in Costa Rica. Since then, the organisation has released around 120 birds into the surrounding rainforest, which is estimated to have increased Costa Rica’s Great Green Macaw population by roughly 40 per cent. The work involves breeding, soft-release programmes that help birds adjust gradually to life in the wild, reforestation, and community outreach. Visitors are welcome to take guided tours, and the site also accepts volunteers. It operates under government oversight and is widely regarded as a meaningful example of community-led wildlife conservation
2. Sloth Sanctuary
The Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica sits on a 320-acre private nature reserve along the Caribbean coast, between the towns of Limón and Cahuita, not far from Puerto Viejo. It was founded in 1992 by Judy Avey-Arroyo and her husband Luis after they took in an injured sloth, and has since grown into a centre focused on the rescue, rehabilitation, and release of both species found in the country — the two-toed and the three-toed sloth. Animals that cannot survive in the wild are given permanent care, while those that recover well enough are returned to their natural habitat. Visitors can join guided tours, which run most days from the morning through to early afternoon, and include a look at the nursery where orphaned and injured sloths are looked after. The most well-known resident is Buttercup, a two-toed sloth who has been at the sanctuary since its earliest days. Visitors are not permitted to handle the animals, which is in keeping with the sanctuary’s conservation focus. Getting there from Puerto Viejo is straightforward by taxi, shuttle, or public bus, with journey times of roughly 30 to 40 minutes.
3. White Water rafting on the Pacuare River
The Pacuare River, set within Costa Rica’s lush Caribbean lowlands not far from Puerto Viejo, is widely regarded as one of the finest white water rafting destinations in Central America. The river runs through dense rainforest and narrow gorges, offering a mix of Grade III and IV rapids that are challenging enough to be exciting but accessible to most people with a reasonable level of fitness and no prior experience. Trips typically run over one or two days, and most operators supply all the necessary equipment along with a qualified guide who handles safety briefings and steers the raft through the more technical sections. Between the rapids, the river calms considerably, giving paddlers a chance to take in the surrounding jungle, listen to the wildlife, and recover before the next stretch of white water. It rains regularly in this part of Costa Rica, which keeps the river running well, though it also means getting wet is all but guaranteed regardless of conditions on the water. Accommodation options at riverside camps vary in comfort, and overnight stays tend to be basic but functional. The Pacuare is a genuine natural experience — unhurried, physically engaging, and memorable without requiring any particular skill to enjoy.
Where to stay in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca
1. Villas del Caribe
Tucked along the wild Caribbean coastline of Costa Rica, Villa del Caribe in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca is the kind of place that makes you forget you ever had a to-do list. This charming collection of bungalows sits right on the beach, where the jungle meets the sea and howler monkeys provide the morning alarm call. Each villa is simple but full of character — think tropical wood interiors, hammocks swaying on private terraces, and the constant soundtrack of waves rolling in just steps away. It’s perfectly placed for exploring the laid-back surf town of Puerto Viejo, visiting Cahuita National Park, or simply doing absolutely nothing at all. For a slice of unplugged Caribbean bliss, this is hard to beat.
2. Roots Family – Backpacker Hotel
3. Relax Natural Village
Tucked into the lush greenery of the Cocles region, about two kilometres from the vibrant town of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Relax Natural Village is an adults-only retreat consisting of just six handbuilt wooden cabins nestled deep in nature and surrounded by tropical plants. Each cabin features a large private porch with colourful hammocks and Adirondack chairs, ceiling fans, and spacious walk-in shower bathrooms — with the property’s own plants acting as natural insect repellants. Wildlife sightings are a genuine highlight, with guests regularly spotting sloths, toucans, iguanas, and howler monkeys from their porches. A short stroll brings you to Playa Cocles, and the Jaguar Rescue Center is less than five minutes away by car — making this intimate hideaway the perfect base for couples seeking both tranquillity and adventure on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast.
More to Explore
