Proyecto Asis Wildlife Rescue Center

Recently, we paid a visit to an animal rescue center near La Fortuna, Costa Rica called Proyecto Asis. Our kids can never seem to get enough of animals, and this seemed like a good opportunity to not only see them, but interact with them, learn about them, feed them, and even clean up after them. And it was a blast!

The beautiful drive to La Fortuna

The drive toward La Fortuna is beautiful! It’s a lot more green and lush than even Grecia, and especially more so than the dry Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. The roads were pretty winding, though, and we had to stop a couple times to let Emily throw up. Although she wasn’t feeling well when she got up that morning, so the first time could have been remnants of the previous days’ food.

We arrived at Projecto Asis at around 8:30am (it’s about a 1 1/2 hour drive from Grecia, so we left pretty early). And we stayed until around noon. The center is taking care of several different animals, each of which we got to interact with on some level. We learned interesting facts about many of them, and had a lot of fun feeding them and watching them eat.

Getting ready to clean

Once the animals were finished eating, the girls were handed rubber boots and brooms to enter the animals’ cages and sweep the floors. They were such hard workers, and really enjoyed doing it, and were happy to be able to feel of service. Jen and I mostly helped from the sidelines and took pictures. :) (We couldn’t all fit in the cages anyway). It was a great experience for the whole family.

Here is a list of the animals and what we got to do with them:

• Wild pig: feed, pet (they squirt out an interesting milky liquid pheremone when they’re happy)
• Spider monkeys: Feed
• Scarlet Macaw: Feed, pet
• Raccoons: Feed, pet, and clean up
• Toucan: Feed, pet, and clean up
• Parrots: Feed and clean up
• White-faced capuchin monkey: Feed
• Kinkajou: Feed, pet, and clean up
• Cayman: See from a safe distance
• Blue-billed heron, hummingbirds, hawk, and more: See

The girls loved this and talked about it for the rest of the day. We’re glad we took the chance to come and see Proyecto Asis.

Rather than driving the 1 1/2 hours back to Grecia afterward, we decided to drive another 30 minutes or so to La Fortuna to spend the night at a hotel and enjoy the hot springs next to the Arenal volcano. I’ll be writing about that in another post. Until then, enjoy the pictures and video below from our trip to the rescue center.