Costa Rican Critters

Let me warn you: It was very hard to take these pictures so get excited for some blurry animal photos!

One thing I learned from Costa Rica is that there are all sorts of cool looking animals and birds that just chilling all over the place. I mean you'll be driving down the road and all of the sudden a cartload of monkeys (Seriously one of the collective nouns for monkeys is cartload. I find that both annoying and adorable.) will cross right in front of you carrying their itty bitty babies (That actually happened. My photos suck mainly cause I forgot that I had a camera until most of the monkeys had passed). It's like watching the nature channel, but with more mosquitos and humidity.

Tortuguero National Park is a turtle nesting area and during the turtle season you can actually see the baby turtles hatch and make their way towards the water (FYI - We did not go during turtle season). We spent two nights in Tortuguero which is this gorgeous piece of nature that you can only get to by boat or airplane. Cars are prohibited which is cool (however, it's less cool when you want to find a karaoke bar in the town and have no way to get there). And so when we were staying there we went on a couple of boat cruises in the national park where we got to see lots of things that could kill me in mere moments.

Here's my favorite Costa Rican critters that I took pictures of:

Monos (That's monkeys in Spanish. Look at me applying knowledge.) There's like four types of monkeys that are native to Costa Rica. I honestly couldn't tell you the differences between them if you paid me. Except the white faced monkey. I think I can pick that one out of a lineup. This is one of the other three.

Caimans - Did you guys know that apparently the crocodile family is not limited to just alligators and crocodiles? There's this smaller crocodile family member called a caiman. And yes, I was prepared to call this guy a crocodile in the chance that I didn't see an actual crocodile.

Crocodiles - But lucky for me, we came across one later. Now honestly I am only about 95% sure that this was a real crocodile and not a toy. Because we seriously sat around it for a while and it didn't move at all, apparently crocodiles are lazy.

Sloths - Speaking of lazy. Did you know a sloth was sometimes called a 'Lazy Bear'? And that when we saw him, all I could think of was the SNL video about sloths (Seriously that video will reduce me to fits of giggles every time.) We also had one that was in the tree above our bungalow (at least that's what the people working there told us. There was a huddled mass in a tree above our room, but it could have been Santa for all I could tell).

Aninga - Bird watchers apparently love Costa Rica, cause there are lot of different types of birds all in one place. Personally, I'm not much of a bird fan. But some of the bigger birds did this thing where they just kind of spread themselves out to soak up the sun. I thought that was pretty entertaining. There are a number of pictures of me, where I'm doing a similar move.

Iguanas - There were some huge and bright orange iguanas all over the place. This one doesn't look orange. But the others did, I promise.

Those were my favorite animals that I saw (or at least that I took pictures of) in Costa Rica. I have tons of pictures where all you see is some sort of lump and you're like, "Well I think that's some sort of creature". I think it'll lend itself to a fun drinking game.

The crocodile and the monkey were on the 101 Things to Do Before I Die item 'See These Animals in the Wild'. So I now have seen 4/20 animals listed in the wild (hummingbird, monkey, bear, and crocodile).

Have you ever seen any of these critters in the wild? What's the coolest animal you've ever seen? Do you have tips on how to take better animal photos? And don't you think the "See You Later Alligator....." saying should be expanded to include caimans too?