Donde Cope is a small wildlife garden in La Unión de Guápiles, about 45–50 minutes from my base in Sarapiquí. José Alberto "Cope" Pérez is a Costa Rican artist, photographer and naturalist who has turned the land around his house into a unique place to photograph wildlife. A small river runs below the viewing platform in his back garden, with extensive forest beyond it, and every part of this is explored.

Cope is unique because he is a superb photographer in his own right and understands what photographers need. He also has a profound and instinctive understanding of his own patch of forest, and a visible bond with the animals living around it. He led us into the forest to see Crested Owls and a Spectacled Owl, which were improbably deep in the forest and almost invisible, even when he pointed to them. A real find was the remarkable Great Potoo (Nyctibius grandis), a nocturnal bird whose plumage makes it look like part of the broken tree on which it rests. Back in the garden, he had lights set up around flowers for hummingbird photography without flash, which led to some of my most dramatic shots of the trip so far.

The clearest example of Cope's bond with nature was that a full-grown female Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth and her baby were living in his back garden. They came slowly down a tree to within two metres of us, in one of the most extraordinary experiences of the trip. Most sloths I had seen were a distant patch of fur high in a tree, so this was a privileged opportunity to photograph something rare and special.

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