Tour day 4

Today we saw crocodiles!  We even fed 'em.  And we saw a lot of birds too.  John took almost 1000 pictures.  Happy sorting...

We managed to avoid rush-hour traffic problems on the way out this morning, and drove down a very nice highway to the coast.  There we embarked on a walking tour of Carara National Park, hoping to see some exciting wildlife.  We did see some, although not as much as we hoped.  The best time to see it is in the early morning, but we would have had to leave the condo at 4 am to do that.  No big snakes, unfortunately.  But we saw lots of ants.  Lots and lots.  And lots.  Part way through we came to an "Indiana Jones" suspension bridge:  we named it such because it was blocked off to prevent foot travel - probably because it was in need of repair.  But we found a trail that went around it, down into the dry creek bed and up the other side.  The hike lasted probably 1.5 hours, although it was not strenuous at all, and the trail was well kept.  It was interesting to listen to the different bird sounds (too bad we could not see the birds much of the time).  The loudest sounds came from the secadas, though.  Glad we don't have any of these around home.

We then drove to the Tarcoles River for the boat tour.  This river is much wider than the Sarapiqui River that we toured yesterday.  And we were very close to the ocean as well.  We saw lots of new birds - different species here on the Pacific side versus the Carribean side.  And of course the crocodiles.  Amanda will describe those in more detail.  They were definitely the highlight, at least for me.

After the boat tour we had a nice lunch on the shore of the river in an open air restaurant (they did not seem too concerned about the crocodiles).  Then we drove back, again avoiding any rush-hour problems in San Jose.

For dinner we found an excellent restaurant nearby called Grandma's House, run by a Canadian from New Brunswick.  Great food.  Ask Ben how many pork ribs he ate.

Tomorrow:  another volcano!