Costa Rica River Boat Cruise

We arrived in Puntarenas, Costa Rica at 7:00am and had to meet our tour bus at 7:15.  This means that I had to be up by 5:45 in order to take my pills and eat an hour later and still make the bus.

We drove to a spot on the Tarcoles River and took an hour boat ride seeing the wild life.  There is no way I will be able to upload all of the pictures that we took so I will select only a few and then upload the rest to my Picasa album when we get free internet. 

Before we got on the boat we were able to observe these leaf cutting ants.  Look closely at the green dots moving down the tree.

This is our guide, Roy.  He teaches English and Biology to 7th and 8th graders at the high school three days a week.  He works a a guide the other days of the week.  His English was wonderful and he was very knowledgeable.

One of the first wild things we saw was this bright green lizard.

Another interesting lizard was this Jesus Christ Lizard.  When we finally got him to move he literally walked on water to get to a tree.

We saw lots of beautiful birds.  Some of which are below:

This is a Northern Jicana.

This Tiger Heron had caught a flat fish for it’s breakfast.

This beautiful Mot Mot also had it’s breakfast ready to eat.

This is an Aningua (sp?)

This is a Wood Stork.

This is a Kingfisher.

We finally saw some Scarlet Macaws.  They are protected in this area.

We spooked them so they flew away.

Another creature we saw were these crabs in the mud along the bank.  There was also a black one with very white claws but it refused to pose for a picture.

Of course, what we saw the most of were the crocodiles.  They were everywhere.  This big fellow came towards us before disappearing into the water.

After our river boat cruise we boarded the bus to go to see the rain forest.