STL DPB On The Road - Bite Me

There is an estuary on the west side of Tamarindo that runs a mile or two inland. You can take a ride with a local boatman who points out the many form of wildlife. There are lots of species of birds and sneaky predators like this crocodile. 

No running your hand through the water from the boat. However, I have seen boys swimming around the area where the boats are moored. Perhaps as a result, the sign was recently installed.

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - RIO TEMPISQUE

Note carefully the horizontal shape at the bottom of the first picture. The snowy egeret doesn't seem worried.

We took a day trip with a guide yesterday to Palo Verde national park, including a long boat ride on the Rio Tempisque, the principal waterway in the area. If you will pardon an overworked phrase, the place is teeming with wildlife. These guides have amazing vision and experience, picking out things I could never see on my own.

We'll do a few birds today. I lost track of all the names. The second one is a boat-billed flycatcher. One of the other two could be a dag nabbit bootie shaker for all I know.

Many thanks to my photography patron saint, Bobbi Lane, for suggesting a work-around for using the Fuji until the problem is fixed.     

Bite Me

So quoth Bart Simpson. When our son was a kid he used to like to say that when he wanted to be a little bit in our faces but not over the line. 

We went to this place called El Viejo Wetlands. Guanacaste Province, here in the northwest of Costa Rica, is a dustbowl at this time of wet season - dry season cycle. However, there is a river, the Tempisque, that gets wider and wider as it flows towards the Pacific, becoming more of a brackish estuary than a river. El Viejo (the old man) is a huge sugar cane plantation irrigated by its waters. You can drive out to the middle of nowhere (thank heaven for Google Maps and international cellular service!) to see the old plantation house, have lunch and take a boat ride on the Tempisque with a naturalist.

The place is crawling with crocodiles, the salt-water badass cousins of the alligators so common in the US around the Gulf coast and throughout Florida. Our guide and the boatman thought this was a safe distance, but I want to tell you, I was using a long telephoto.

More critters to see around there and some other odd things to do. More to come.                 

Bite Me

They got crocodiles in the river here!

Actually, not quite a river. There is an estuary between Tamarindo and Playa Grande that goes a couple of miles inland. Playa Grande is a national wildlife preserve. This is the beach where leatherback turtles come to lay their eggs. You can take a boat tour, which we did yesterday. The lower reaches are salt water, a perfect hangout for crocodiles. 

There is lots of other wildlife, particularly birds. I think that's a snowy egret in the second photo. Beneath that, the cute iguana is a much less menacing cousin of the croc. We don't know the birds in the bottom photo. Any insights?