The Layover Was the Vacation

The direct flight was shorter and more convenient. My comfort-loving husband would have taken it.

My biggest flex

I booked the one with the layover. Opting for layovers in exotic destinations instead of direct flights, much to my hubby's (comfort-loving) dismay, is my biggest flex.

This time the layover was two days, and the exotic destination was Costa Rica.

A midnight beeline

We rented a car and made a midnight beeline for the beach.

This was not, it turned out, an ordinary sunbathing sesh. Something in me came unleashed, and it was my inner adventurer.

Chasing waterfalls

I chased waterfalls, which TLC specifically advised against. I conquered hiking trails that would make a mountain goat proud. And I spent a good part of the trip mastering the sawanobori.

Sawanobori is a Japanese mountain sport, and the name means, more or less, stream climbing. Instead of walking a trail beside a river, you go up the river itself: wading, swimming through pools, scrambling over boulders and climbing the waterfalls in your way, against the current, toward the source. In English it sometimes goes by shower climbing, which is accurate. Practitioners wear felt-soled shoes for grip on wet rock, and a helmet, because the rock is wet.

Then, to balance the books, I sipped cocktails on the beach like a beachside Bond.

A painted pair

Along the way we met a pair of oxen in full Costa Rican dress: long horns, fringed leather over their brows, and a yoke painted red and swirled with color. That decoration is a national tradition. From the mid-1800s, oxcarts, carretas, hauled Costa Rica's coffee from the Central Valley over the mountains to the port of Puntarenas on the Pacific, a trip of ten to fifteen days. The carts rolled on solid, spokeless wheels that cut through the mud instead of sinking into it. Each region painted its carts its own way, so you could tell where a driver was from by his wheels, and each cart was built to make its own sound, a chime from a metal ring knocking against the hub as it bumped along. Trucks and trains took over the hauling long ago. UNESCO lists Costa Rica's oxherding and oxcart traditions as intangible cultural heritage of humanity, and the painted carts still turn out for parades and festivals.

Sloths, finally

In the nature reserve we spotted sloths and macaws. After years of using those emojis without the credentials, we can finally use them guilt-free.

Why a sloth risks its life to poop

Sloths are famous for doing nothing, slowly. The more interesting thing is the one thing a three-toed sloth will go out of its way to do.

A sloth lives on leaves, which are poor fuel, and it runs on a metabolic rate less than half of what you would expect for an animal its size. It digests more slowly than any other mammal. Everything about it is built to save energy. And yet, about once a week, a three-toed sloth climbs all the way down from the canopy to the base of its tree, digs a small hollow in the ground with its stubby tail, and does its business there. Then it climbs back up.

That trip is expensive. Researchers estimate it costs about 8% of a sloth's daily energy budget, and the forest floor is where predators can reach it. A sloth could simply let go from the branches. It does not.

In 2014, a team led by wildlife ecologist Jonathan Pauli of the University of Wisconsin-Madison proposed why, and the answer is a tiny ecosystem. Sloth fur is home to moths that live nowhere else. When the sloth climbs down, female moths riding in its fur lay their eggs in the fresh dung. The larvae grow up eating it, and the adults fly back up to the canopy to find a sloth of their own. Along the way, the moths carry nutrients into the fur, raising its nitrogen, and that feeds the algae that grow there and give sloths their faint green tint. The sloths eat the algae, which is rich in fats, a useful extra on a diet of leaves. The team found that the algae in sloths' stomachs matched the algae in their fur, and that three-toed sloths, the weekly climbers, carried more moths, more nutrients and more algae than two-toed sloths.

So the weekly descent may be the sloth tending its garden: a risky, costly trip down, made because of what it brings back. The researchers are careful to say they have not yet measured whether the algae fully pays for the climb.

The selfie count

And please do not start asking about the number of jungle selfies we snapped. It is practically zero, because I was too busy mastering the sawanobori.

If you go

• Getting in. US citizens do not need a visa for Costa Rica. You need a valid passport and a return or onward ticket. When we went in July 2023, visa-free visitors were allowed up to 90 days; since September 2023 the limit has been up to 180 days, at the immigration officer's discretion. Rules change, so check Costa Rica's immigration authority (DGME) or the Costa Rican embassy before you fly.
• The rental car. Third-party liability insurance from Costa Rica's national insurer is required by law, and a credit card's rental coverage cannot replace it. Quotes from big booking sites often leave it out, so the price at the counter can be higher than the price on your screen. Ask for the all-in figure before you book.
• Sloths. Look up, and look slowly. A sloth in a tree reads as a clump of leaves or a termite nest until it moves, which may take a while. If you see one on the ground, you may have caught it on its weekly errand. Give it room.
• Macaws. Costa Rica has two native macaws: the scarlet macaw (lapa roja) and the critically endangered great green macaw (lapa verde). Scarlets are usually found on the Pacific side and great greens in the Caribbean lowlands, though both have been spreading as their populations recover.
• Sawanobori. It is climbing in moving water. Go with someone who knows the river, and wear the helmet.

Worth the extra stop

A direct flight is the efficient choice. So is staying up in the canopy. A three-toed sloth, the most efficient animal in the forest, still makes the long, costly trip down once a week, because what it gets out of the detour is worth more than what the detour costs. Two days, one rental car and practically zero selfies say I agree with the sloth. Who needs a snooze-fest of a direct flight when the layover can be the vacation?