After we completed our tour of the gardens and had an amazing traditional lunch, we boarded our bus and headed out to the river. This was the only time we encountered rain. As we started the tour, we experienced a warm rain shower. It only lasted a few minutes; we did get some sunshine back and it was warm.
Our tour guide....he's been doing this for several years and was quite entertaining!
One of the boats going by...ours was similar to this.
Birds were prolific in this area and just beautiful.
Iguanas were fun to watch. They are quite skitterish and didn't like hanging out for pictures.
This bird had the most interesting tail. It actually was in sections and the bottom part just appeared to be hanging by strings! This bird nests in the mud and there were times when we could only see the very tip of his tail.
Sticking out his neck!
Mama alligator......
watching her babies. The mama stays in the water next to the babies on shore. The babies don't get in the water until they are about 4 months old so mama's job is to make sure they are safe. She becomes quite aggressive if anything/anyone comes even close. We kept our distance in the boat. Greg captured all of these shots with the 300mm telephoto lense.
Meet Osama. He is about 18 years old and lives on the river. Alligators are very territorial and Osama has been tagged and watched by the naturalists to study his behavior, habitat, etc. He got into a fight with another alligator named Tornado. They believe he was fighting for more territory. Tornado lost the battle and an eye and now Osama has taken over the end of the river. Our tour guide was able to get this guy to swim up next to the boat and show his teeth.
Osama is about 30 feet long and this is the end of his tail. We literally could have touched it from the boat; that's how close he got to us.
More interesting birds.
These are pink hawks. There were about 10 of them roosting in this tree.
Pink crane.
Local fishermen/woman trolling for dinner. Most of the boats are wooden and are powered by oars.
The trees in the river grow their roots from above the ground. It's an interesting site. The saddest part of the tour was seeing all the garbage that has collected at the mouth of the river. The people who live in this area dump so much garbage into the river and it floats down to the mouth of the river at the ocean and collects there. The country has now developed strategies to improve this situation and is providing more education about recycling, etc. Part of our fees for this excursion went to support this effort.
The insects on the trees in the rain forest region of the river were big and ugly! These spiders were creepy! It was a great tour, though and we learned so much about the Costa Rican lifestyle and country.
Our tour guide....he's been doing this for several years and was quite entertaining!
One of the boats going by...ours was similar to this.
Birds were prolific in this area and just beautiful.
Iguanas were fun to watch. They are quite skitterish and didn't like hanging out for pictures.
This bird had the most interesting tail. It actually was in sections and the bottom part just appeared to be hanging by strings! This bird nests in the mud and there were times when we could only see the very tip of his tail.
Sticking out his neck!
Mama alligator......
watching her babies. The mama stays in the water next to the babies on shore. The babies don't get in the water until they are about 4 months old so mama's job is to make sure they are safe. She becomes quite aggressive if anything/anyone comes even close. We kept our distance in the boat. Greg captured all of these shots with the 300mm telephoto lense.
Meet Osama. He is about 18 years old and lives on the river. Alligators are very territorial and Osama has been tagged and watched by the naturalists to study his behavior, habitat, etc. He got into a fight with another alligator named Tornado. They believe he was fighting for more territory. Tornado lost the battle and an eye and now Osama has taken over the end of the river. Our tour guide was able to get this guy to swim up next to the boat and show his teeth.
Osama is about 30 feet long and this is the end of his tail. We literally could have touched it from the boat; that's how close he got to us.
More interesting birds.
These are pink hawks. There were about 10 of them roosting in this tree.
Pink crane.
Local fishermen/woman trolling for dinner. Most of the boats are wooden and are powered by oars.
The trees in the river grow their roots from above the ground. It's an interesting site. The saddest part of the tour was seeing all the garbage that has collected at the mouth of the river. The people who live in this area dump so much garbage into the river and it floats down to the mouth of the river at the ocean and collects there. The country has now developed strategies to improve this situation and is providing more education about recycling, etc. Part of our fees for this excursion went to support this effort.
The insects on the trees in the rain forest region of the river were big and ugly! These spiders were creepy! It was a great tour, though and we learned so much about the Costa Rican lifestyle and country.
1 comment:
I'm amazed that the mud-dwelling bird looks so clean and brightly colored! How does that work?
Beautiful photos :)
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