The Mangroves

One of the main (and infact only) tours or activities to do whilst in Monterrico is to take a boat tour of the nearby mangrove swamps. This tour is best taken in the early morning with a guide by rowing boat. Me and Conny decided to take the tour early on the Monday morning. Very early, at about 5am infact.

The taxi rank


The mangroves


Our guide was a local chap who was recommended to us by Toby. Unfortunately he only spoke spanish so alot (infact all) of what he said was pretty much lost on me. It was a very relaxing tour, though I wouldn't say i learnt alot about the area.

Tranquil waters


Beautiful views onto the mountains behind


A sleeping Heron, I was jealous


To say the area is a nature reserve, it seems there were very few rules about where the tour could and couldn't go. We pushed our way through the reeds, which was very beautiful but couldn't have been too good for the conservation of the reserve (I'm all about that kind of thing nowadays you know).

Off the beaten track


The main wildlife of the day was herons and various other birds. I had maybe hoped for turtles or crocodiles but everything was a little more tranquil than that. Infact I spent alot of the tour trying to work out whether 'if I fell asleep, would I fall in?' the answer I think would have been yes.

Bird life


Again despite the fact the area was a protected reserve, local water taxi's passed us quite regularly. I can imagine its quite difficult to tell local people, who have very little, that they should drive round the area in cars, rather than travel the much shorter distance across it in old diesel driven boats.

A local water taxi