Märzen's first Mexican adventure

Today Märzen had her first excursion in Mexico. Usually we leave her to guard the boat. She wouldn't enjoy all the walking in the heat that we've been doing, and at La Cruz she would have gotten filthy in the dust. But today we did the jungle river dinghy trip, made famous by the Captain Rains Guide, and Märzen got to come along.

The jungle river trip is about two and a half miles long and runs along the north side of Bahía Tenacatita on the Rio Iguana. The dinghy trip begins at the mouth, near where we're anchored, and follows the river through tunnels in the mangroves to a beach (Playa Escolleras) on the other side of Punto Chubasco at the entrance to the bay. To enter the river you have to paddle or get out and pull the dinghy over the bar, or in our case, a little of both. Along the river are lots of birds (pelicans, egrets, ibis, kingfishers, heron, and something we didn't recognize), butterflies, crabs, and a few reptiles. The crabs seem to live on the mangroves. I don't remember seeing them in the mangroves in Costa Rica, so they may be unique here. Supposedly wild crocodiles hunt iguanas here, but we didn't see any iguanas and only saw one baby crocodile.

Märzen started out sitting on my lap in the bow of the dinghy as usual until she smelled something that got her so excited that she had to drape herself over the bow, craning her nose in front of the boat. When we reached Playa Escolleras we found more than a dozen cantinas lining the beach so, of course, we had lunch there before heading back. Märzen sat quietly under our table and behaved beautifully. The whole adventure was a lot of excitement for a little dog. When we got back to Solstice, she promptly took a nap. (And so did we.)

--Shirlee