
Cabina pool
Took our breakfast poolside. Blue tile like fine polish pottery. Blue that relaxes, invites, makes you happy. A neat day. A day of nothing. And everything. 22 didn’t leave home and I barely did. It seems like the best, and most, nature is found when you just sit for awhile. Patience and quiet. NOT while you’re running around, paying guides good money to help you look for it. Just sit. Do your thing. It practically comes to you. Now here. I will tell you that 22 is an animal whisperer. As long as I’ve known him, he has the sense. An appreciation. A skill. And therefore, the knack. Some people never do. Never will. Some people try and learn it. Then, there’s the birders. Like in Alaska. I won’t even go there. I write by the pool. He swims. We listen to the soundscape. Before you know it, critters are coming out of the greenwork. Finally, a miniscule frog like you see on the postcards. There they are magnified, blown up and photoshopped. Really tho, these brilliantly colored amphibs are no bigger than the size of your thumbnail, at best. This one is neon Green and Black Dart Frog. Highly poisonous. If you touch it and then touch your mouth specifically, chances are, you’ll die. As we sat, I began to realize that Cabinas Iguanas is called this for a reason. Imagine that!

Black and green dart frog

Verde Iguana
Bright green iguanas hoisted their way across and over palm trees and branches and though limbs. Though rather ungraceful while crossing high and horizontal, they moved steadily down the trunk or front of whatever they exited to reach ground. Skimming over rock mosaic sidewalks, slowly make a brief and curious stop then moving along up the net foliage. So cool they are. Some with a good meter or so tail. Then squirrels and cools birds. A flash of a toucan was gone before we got a good eye on him. A brown and yellow-headed woodpecker that I can’t seem to identify. Morphos fluttering by. A Basilisk lizard and several Whiptails. Rustlings and sitings every 5 minutes. More frogs. Hummingbirds, raccoons, orioles. These tropical rainforest areas produce crazy critters. 22 stood in the pool watching the trees for activity and then “J, bring the binocs. Stat.” He has managed to spot the kimodo dragon of iguanas. The Head Honch. The Grand Daddy mother of them all.

Iguana Daddy Mac
He was up in a tree, a peculiar shade of rusty orange, arms the size of mine, with a 1.5 meter orange and black striped tail. He must’ve been 2-3 meters total. Hard to tell from ground level. He laid, catching sunlight, moving slow and infrequent. Large white underbelly. A force to be reckoned with. His “spikes” all along his head and back, fearsome enough to shut down predators. He moved a little, leaving us speechless. We could only watch. Before we knew it, he was gone. Maybe infiltrating our cabin. Who knows?
It’s ironic. I was making fun earlier of the oceanic pictures in our cabina. The kind that show all the critters you could possible want and hope to see all together in a nicely laminated 11×13 photo. “You’d NEVER see that.” I heckled. But now I get it. In the scenescape I saw today, I came damn close to seeing just that.
We got in the ocean by our cabinas for the first time. It was less intimidating than we thought. In fact, it had the nicest, cleanest, sandiest bottom yet. We walked down Playa Negra to where the reefs began like gigantic limestone platforms in layers down the coast. 22 slaved over our own homemade casados. Plates of cabbage salad with fresh mango dressing, black bean, rice and seasoned pollo. Spoiled!

Homeade casada