Tales From the Jungle: Slothober
What a wild month we’ve had! We got it through Slothtober with flying colors and even hosted the first-ever International Sloth Festival— if you didn’t manage to join us in person or online, check out our social media for details, pictures, and some great art. We’re so grateful to everyone involved, this success couldn’t have happened without you! Now, let’s talk about all the crazy stuff that’s happened this October.
Wow! Major Donation!
We are extremely happy to announce our biggest donation yet from our friends The Slow Patrol, who donated $50,000 from the sale of their NFT sloth collection! This is going to have a HUGE positive impact on our projects. Thank You Slow Patrol!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbre6HEVsPo&ab_channel=TheSlothConservationFoundation
The 1st International Sloth Fest!
We are proud to announce that the first-ever International Sloth Festival was a great success. It was hosted at Tasty Waves (yes, that Tasty Waves, former home of our Urban Sloth Nacho) who have always been enthusiastic supporters of SloCo and other wildlife conservationists in the area.
Our children’s activities included face painting, coloring books, Pin-the-Moth-on-the-Sloth, and the hugely popular “Sloth Trail”, where kids helped our educator Kassandra find a stuffed animal sloth fitted out with one of our radio collars.
They got to see how our radio receiver and antenna work and get a little taste of what Urban Sloth tracking is like. We left out the swamps and mud puddles though, kids can usually find those without any help.
Of interest to all ages was our photo booth, an appearance by our mascot Siesta the Sloth, and the installation of a sloth crossing bridge right in front of Tasty Waves! Now Tiki, the current resident sloth, doesn’t have to climb along with the lights when he wants to move between trees. Our climbing team really rocked it with the bridge demonstration, getting up and down the trees and showing us all how to rappel safely.
Dog trainer and specialist Anthony Vado ran the Oh My Dog booth, giving tips, advice, and education about how to be a responsible pet owner whose dog is happy, healthy, and doesn’t harass wildlife.
Also as part of our Oh My Dog project we had a special Dog Olympics, where humans and canines alike got to have some fun and exercise on the beach and show off their dog’s obedience training.
Especially popular was our second Slow Raffle where people won some really amazing prizes; accommodations at luxury hotels, gift certificates to local restaurants, savory Costa Rican coffee, clothes, t-shirts, and more! The raffle raised over $1000, and offered a chance for our supporters to show off some of the best that Puerto Viejo has to offer. We want to give a special thank you to the sponsors of the raffle:
Sloths are international!
Though our in-person events for the festival were based here in Puerto Viejo, our online events were enjoyed all over the world: we spent Sloth Week collaborating with other amazing organizations, personalities, content creators who were hosting fundraisers for us, doing giveaways to their followers and raising awareness about sloths!
We hosted our first VIP Urban Sloth Project live Q&A with our Ecology Coordinator Amelia and we had a great time! We’re looking forward to organizing more of these before 2021 is over– if you’re not yet part of the VIP community, join here!
FAILS OF THE MONTH:
Jungle WIFI:
Sometimes we have great Wi-Fi access with good equipment transmitted along state-of-the-art fiber optic lines… and sometimes it feels like our internet is the equivalent of two coconuts strung together with a bit of wire. As luck would have it, International Sloth Day was one of the latter, and we lost connection several times while trying to host our Q&As and live streaming events.
TIKI: slow TIMING
Tiki is a two-fingered sloth who lives above Tasty Waves— she was Nacho’s neighbor before he took off for other bars closer to town. Tiki was the guest of honor at Sloth Fest, where she served as an educational model for many of our guests as we pointed out her many cool features. For her part, she spent the entire festival sleeping in her favorite sea almond tree above the bar.
Around 7 pm, several hours after the festival was over, the bar closed and everybody went home; and THEN Tiki came down from the tree! If she’d done this earlier we could have had a great learning opportunity for everyone about how to safely keep your distance from wild sloths and not stress them out. Alas, sloths do things on their own time!
PEOPLE didn’t want to leave
The Sloth Festival was such a great success that we were on our toes making sure that our space stayed under Covid-restrictions capacity because so many people came to see us or stopped by on their way somewhere else. Then they had such fun they all wanted to stay! And we wanted them to stay! but all good things must end, and with Covid restrictions being what they are, everything ended sooner than we all wanted. People were having so much fun we had trouble getting them to leave!
A lot to be grateful for
The International Sloth Fest wouldn’t have been possible without the tireless support of our friends at Tasty Waves. Not only do they provide housing for the likes of Nacho and Tiki, but they also lent us their space to host the festival and put in some long hours on what was supposed to be their day off. Thank you Bryton and Lydia! You are the best!
Another special shout out to Sloth Toes, a local brand with the very best in sloth-themed clothes and accessories. Sloth Toes donated 50 shirts and over 100 stickers to SloCo to be sold at the festival! Check out their online store and get a sweet sloth t-shirt!
Many thanks also go to the local organizations that came to the festival to educate and raise awareness of other conservation issues of the South Caribbean: Coral Conservation, BIOtiful Future, and Blue Youth. Many volunteers kindly give their time and effort to make this happen: you guys are heroes!
We are grateful to all of the organizations, content creators, newspapers, blogs, and personalities who worked with us during this month to share sloth love and awareness on their platforms. Interconnectivity is so important, and your collaboration is what keeps us going.
Last but not least, we want to thank YOU, dear reader, for being part of Team Sloth!
Thank you for your support and for your immense presence in our social media channels. To you, who donate, sponsor a project, adopt a sloth, read our blogs, comment, and share our content on social media. To you, sloth lover, who makes it possible for wild sloths to continue to exist and have a future!
Organizing Sloth Fest was a labor of immense love, a few mistakes, and a lot of sleepless nights. We live and learn, and we’ve already set our sights on an even bigger and better SECOND International Sloth Fest! With better internet, more guests, more booths, more events, more speakers, more collaborating organizations—and hopefully, a world with more sloths.
All the best from the jungle,
Rebecca Cliffe.
