When we read in our guidebook that often coatis can be seen at the road of La Fortuna to the Arenal, we really hoped to be lucky discovering some of those animals. This hope was increased by the signs which said: “Don’t feed animals” standing along the road. And in fact: on the way to the volcano the car in font of us stops and in the next moment we see a group of coatis walking on the right side of the street. How lucky we are!
Quite when I’m thinking of getting out of the car, behind us the whole traffic broke. Everywhere guides and tourists, parents and children get out of their busses and cars, cameras are taken out and everybody wants to take the best pictures. Therefore, by now we know what “Don’t feed animals” means: nothing else than some food falls every now and then out of the vehicles and the animals are used to this sin a way that the traffic is like a sort of food-delivery.
For them the natural shy is foreign. In contrast it just takes a few seconds until the next animal-family comes down the road in our direction. Arriving the humans they move their noses up and down begging for food and controlling the hands of the people for it.
When they finally were successful and found a man, one of the bus drivers called him names. On the one hand he was right because it is not good for the animals. But on the other hand he must not to stop, he belong to the beneficiary of these behave.
Therefore I will not judge anyone, because he is giving a piece of rusk or some fruits to the animals. When the road changed into a coati - themepark, we had overkill. Later we were lucky to find a single coati, we could observe without to pull it.
