Over the loudspeaker, Johnny introduced Captain Pedro. The captain, he said, had lived all his life in the region and knew the jungle river ‘like his back or his hand’. He would show us many interesting things, many animals. Captain Pedro, wearing a white captain’s hat, turned and grinned at us. He had maybe five teeth.

The boat drifted in the current while Captain Pedro fooled with the starter. The engine growled once, twice, then came on full force and a wave of exhaust passed over the passengers. ‘OK, here we go!’ shouted Johnny. ‘Look for animals everybody!’
It didn’t take long. Just ahead, up on the embankment, we made our first sighting: a cow tied to a tree. Down in the river, three young humans splashed water on one another. The tourists aimed their cameras at the children, who obliged by standing up and revealing their glistening brown and very naked bodies.

Then, all of a sudden, Captain Pedro pointed up at a tree. ‘Look everybody,’ our guide said over the loudspeaker. ‘Captain Pedro sees something. What is it, Captain Pedro? An iguana, everybody! Two, three . . . five iguanas!’

The boat rocked as the tour group shifted weight, everyone leaning out to see, grabbing for their cameras. The tourists frantically fiddled with fancy video equipment and cameras – screwing in lenses, popping in cassettes, unzipping leather camera bags. The humans below were in a panic, but above them the lizards lolled, sunning themselves, blending in with the leaves and fading from sight. About half the group saw them and tried to point them out to the more near-sighted members.

‘Right there, see? Follow the branch out to the cluster of leaves. See him?’
The flurry of excitement over the iguanas proved unnecessary, for soon they were everywhere in the trees above us as we chugged past. For twenty minutes, in fact, they were the only wild animals we saw, and Johnny’s amplified call of ‘Iguanas!’ prompted little enthusiasm.

Just when it looked as though we would have to be content with iguanas and the odd heron, Captain Pedro came through. Or rather his comrade captains came through, and Pedro was sharp enough to get in on the action. What Pedro had seen, some 150 metres downriver, were the manoeuvres of his comrades as they converged near the riverbank. A growing cloud of exhaust indicated that at least one boat was trying to hold steady against the current – the sure sign of an animal sighting.

Immediately, we were roaring at full throttle to join the flotilla and catch a glimpse of whatever had deigned to show itself. With our arrival, four boats bearing some one hundred tourists idled in the current, bows pointed to the bank, while the guides’ distorted voices broadcast facts about the creature – a modest-sized caiman.

It rested on the riverbank, perfectly motionless in confronting the human gaze and the commotion of clicking cameras. The caiman bore it all with such reptilian aplomb that a few tourists wondered aloud if it were still alive. Even though we were within ten metres of the caiman, we didn’t have a good view. The breeze carried the engines’ bluish exhaust over the passengers and the riverbank, enveloping the caiman in a gasoline cloud. The tourists murmured complaints – first that they couldn’t get clear pictures, then that they couldn’t breathe.

costa rica | guatemala | honduras | mexico

on the road