Tortuguero-Sea Turtle refuge - Part 5 continued

For our river cruises, we were required to wear life jackets, and because it was raining, a slicker. Here's John strapping on his life jacket and me looking like a 200 lb. canary in my slicker. We learned it rains 180 inches a year here, in Las Vegas, it rains less than 4" per year. We saw snowy egrets, great egrets, chestnut mandible toucans, great blue herons, anhinguas, black river turtles, spider monkeys, sloths, iguana and Jesus Christ lizards. When they are juveniles, they can run across the surface of the water, hence the name. At the end of one cruise, there was a giant crocodile. They are really scary beasts. We were about 25 feet away from one that was laying on the shore. He didn't like our visit and he moved really, really fast. The next day we went on the second cruise and ended up in Nicaragua, actually, it was just a sign, and we only went about 10 feet over the border. We saw a spider web that was as tight as a soccer goal. There were bats hugging a tree trunk and you could barely distinguish them from the tree. Our guides had very sharp eyes.