Crocodiles, iguanas, and monkeys, oh my!

Palo Verde is a National Park and forest. Tours include a zip line and crocodile tour. I opted for the crocodile tour.

On the bus ride there, we saw men and their individual boats “harvesting” the sand from the bottom of the river. It is illegal to dig up the sand with machinery, so they do it by diving under the water with a bucket and dumping it, one bucket at a time, into a small boat. Then the empty it from the boat onto an Ox cart. Then off to market it goes. 

We also saw cantaloupe fields and sugar cane fields. There were workers in the fields harvesting the sugarcane. Our guide told us ninety percent of the sugar cane is harvested by hand. Lots of hard labor going on in Costa Rica.

After a lot of driving on bumpy dirt roads we came to Palo Verde Park. We got on the boat and took off. The brackish water (a mix of salt water and fresh water) looks muddy/dirty. The tide moves in and out, making it look like the river is flowing one way at one time of the day and the other direction another time of the day.

The boat captain was great. This was not his first time out. He knows where the animals hang out and has an eagle eye. Our first stop was to see a crocodile. We weren’t out of site of the dock, and there it was. I was really hoping to see a crocodile and I lost track of how many we saw. Maybe about a half a dozen. We also saw many iguanas. I had my binoculars with me and I had a really good close up look of them. We also saw a Jesus Christ lizard named as such because it can walk on water.

At the beginning of the trip the captain pulled out some shrimp. I’m not sure if he caught them or brought them along. For show, he let the shrimp hang off the sides of hi face sort of like earrings and walked down the aisle of the boat. Then, the shrimp was thrown out to the boat to the iguana on the bank.

The highlight, in my opinion, was when we came to the group of white faced monkeys, or Capuchin monkeys. The group was close to the bank and swinging from branches and walking in the trees. They are smart enough to know that with the boats close by the crocodiles will stay away and it is safe to come down to the river and drink. Some will swipe their hand or tail near the edge of the water, sort of testing for crocodiles. Some of the younger ones haven’t learned to do that yet and just hang down and put their face right to the water. At one point one monkey came right on our boat!!!! It walked the edge of the boat a few rows and the jumped back into the trees.

There were four or five howler monkeys in the tops of some other threes. Howler monkeys don’t usually come close to the ground. Our guide said they eat leaves and fruits and get their liquid from plants. We saw the nesting area of the iguanas, some birds, and a spider orchid. It is the dry season so there weren’t as many birds as our guide said they sometimes see.

The only disappointment was we didn’t see a sloth. The monkeys made up for that, in my opinion!

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