This weekend we traveled from our home stay in Heredia towards our next home stay in Monteverde. We left early Saturday morning saying goodbye to our families that we had been living with and off we were headed West towards the coast and the mountains. As we were traveling, we stopped a few times for "surprises" that our tour guide had planned for us. Our first stop was to get out of our bus and walk along the bridge of the Tarcoles River. At this spot, many crocodiles gather together and lay in the sun or the water. We saw about 20 crocodiles and they were very big! I was so impressed and in awe at the size of these animals! Our next "surprise" was something that I never thought that I would ever do in my life. We pulled up next to a sign that said Crocodile Safari Boat Tours! I couldn't believe that we were actually going to get in a boat in the same river that many crocodiles lived. We all pilled on the boat and within the first ten minutes, we spotted our first big crocodile. It was a female about 10 or 11 feet long and the driver of our boat pulled over to the nearest bank, grabbed some fish he had in the back of the boat and began slapping the water with the fish. The crocodile turned around and started heading towards us! The driver was on the bank alone with a huge crocodile right in front of him. He fed one fish to the crocodile and had one more left in his bucket. He put the fish in his mouth and the crocodile came within inches to his face before snatching it right from his mouth! It was the craziest thing I've ever seen and was so neat to see it right in front of my face! We then saw numerous other crocodiles and learned a lot about them. It really made me realize the importance of field trips and other things that I can do in my classroom to keep my students engaged. During the whole safari, I was definitely engaged and hardly realized that I was learning all about insects, crocodiles, plants, crabs, birds and all sorts of other information.The next day, we woke up early to go on a hike through the Manuel Antonio National Park. We saw sloths, monkeys, bats, and many other interesting insects, trees, and plants. We had a little more beach time before heading up the mountains to Monteverde where we are staying for two weeks. The ride up was so scary and being in the dark did not help my fears at all! We were literally inches from the cliff and heading up into the clouds. When I looked out the front window, I could hardly see more than a foot in front of the bus. Good thing that we have an awesome driver, Roy, who always gets us to where we need to be safely! We met our new families when we got off the bus...I will tell more about my family the next blog!
Go to this link to watch the crocodile video!!
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