Crocodile Tour

We did the crocodile tour this morning in Tarcoles. It was quite enjoyable, being the downseason some of the tours are very personal. A huge river boat with only like 8 people. So we floated up the Tarcoles river (which is the second largest river in Costa Rica). Apparently National Geographic came a few years ago i think it was, and named this river the most densely populated river with crocodiles in the world maybe... if not THE most densely populated then at least one of the most. They estimated 2000 crocodiles in the last 50 km over the river, thats around 32 or so miles.... CRAZY There were crocodiles everywhere just chillin in the water and on the banks. They have names for their largest crocodiles in the river... Osama Bin Ladin is the biggest at about 17 feet long!!! We kinda spotted him today but couldn't get him to get out of the water, he was hiding. We saw George Bush (a large headed extremely aggressive croc) and he really was aggressive... swimming along the boat and sizing us up. They said to stay clear of the edge with him. Then there is Fidel Castro I believe who we didn't see. The largest female is named Monica Lewinsky and the second largest female at about 10 feet long is named Hilary Clinton. Our tourguide got in the water with her and fed her chicken so we really got to see her in action and out of the water. She was so big I can't even imagine seeing Osama Bin Ladin in action (by the was they call him that because he' s good at hiding and i think rather evasive). But the pics on their Tshirts were of a man feeding Osama i'm pretty sure and the thing looked enormous.
On the way up the river we also saw all sorts of birds. Like storks, herons, black neck stilts, hawks and predatory birds, and also one bird that was just amazingly colored a bright pink with almost orangish tail feathers. It was a skinny bird kind of like the herons but just crazy colors. On our way back we went all the way to the mouth of the river where it outlets into the Pacific, so it is a tidal river which varies a lot in depth with the tide of the ocean. Just about at the mouth we took a right into a mangrove branch of the river (which is where we saw the pink bird). Apparently there are 8 or 9 species of mangroves in the world, 7 in costa rica, and 6 on that very river, they were pretty cool. Oh and Costa Rica has some odd 850 or so species of birds!!! i believe he said around 150 on that river. ( i may have forgotten the exact numbers). Anyways after that we came back chilled at a coffee shop and then checked out more shops around. Oh and booked our tour for white water rafting tomorrow...
That whole Package... breakfast, lunch, white water rafting, and manuel antonia national park tour...we got for 99 dollars each. Which is pretty dang good considering the guy said everyone else on the tour was paying 130... and i'm pretty sure that its probably even more than that in the high tourist season. There are definately positive aspects to coming when tourism is low. These store owners are really down for bargaining cuz they need business! Anyway till next time