Most of this guide is about animals that are more frightened of you than you are of them. This is the exception. The American crocodile is an ambush predator that has been perfecting its craft for a very long time, and it lives in the estuaries along this coast.
Where you’ll see it
River mouths, estuaries and mangroves. The Tamarindo estuary is the one everyone knows, which is why nobody sensible wades across it to reach Playa Grande. The Tempisque river and the wetlands at Palo Verde have large numbers. Coco’s beach has no river mouth and no resident crocodiles, which is one quiet advantage of the town.
The smaller spectacled caiman lives in some of the same places and is much less of a concern, but the two get confused, so treat any large reptile in brackish water as the real thing.
What to know
A crocodile can lie in shallow murky water for hours looking exactly like a log. It hunts at the water’s edge, most actively at dusk and after dark, and it is fast for the first few metres.
The rules are not complicated. Do not swim or wade in estuaries and river mouths. Do not stand at the edge of one at dusk. Keep dogs on a lead and well back from that kind of water, because dogs are exactly the size of a natural meal. Never feed one, and if someone nearby is doing so, leave. Ordinary sea beaches are not the concern. Brackish water is.
