Located near the northeastern corner of Costa Rica, surrounded by rain forest on one side and Caribbean beach on the other, is Tortuguero National Park, whose name means “The Place of Turtles.”
Costa Rica's Tortuguero National Park is the easiest place in the world for viewing sea turtles.
Tortuguero’s 22-mile long beach is the main nesting area for Green Turtles in the Caribbean. It is also the easiest place in the world to view sea turtles.
Green Turtles mate and nest several times during a season. In mating, an amorous male holds onto a female with the sharp hook on his front flippers. If he can’t locate a female, he will improvise and substitute anything that floats, whether it be a piece of driftwood, another male turtle, or a skin diver.
Let’s catch a quetzal—on camera that is. We can begin our hunt by hiking through the Monteverde cloud forest, on a California Native 
According to legend, around 1910 a farmer was suddenly inspired to spruce up the appearance of his oxcart. He painted the wheels with multi-colored designs. Others copied his designs and oxcart painting became a uniquely Costa Rican art form. At one time each district in the country had its own special design, and people could tell by looking at an oxcart what region it came from.
Tapirs are rather strange, primitive creatures. They are big animals—measuring about six to eight feet between their short little trunk and their stubby little tail, and weighing up to 700 pounds. Unlike elephants, who pick up food with their trunks, the tapirs move their trunks aside and browse like horses. Tapirs are the only animals native to the Americas which have four toes on their front feet and three toes on their hind feet.
Hanging upside-down from the branches of trees in Costa Rica’s lush rain forests, sleep the two and three-toed sloths. The Spanish word for sloth is perezoso, meaning “lazy”, and sloths, who sleep around eighteen hours a day, live up to their reputation.
