Walking on the wild side

[expedition_retirement]

Maybe it was because we were staying in a different part of the resort last time and were more dependent upon the shuttles to get around, but I don't remember seeing so much wildlife on the grounds of the resort the last time we were here. But this time we mostly walked everywhere on the resort, and we were almost constantly encountering animals on or near the walkways along the way.

The first first animal we encountered was a large rodent. When I first saw it, I mistakenly identified it as a capybara, which is apparently a common mistake because I heard others calling them by that name. However, after doing some research and determining that the capybara doesn't live this far north, I realized that these were Yucatan Agoutis, which are a bit smaller than the capybara. They were a little skittish, and tended to stay in the underbrush off the sides of the walkways, making it harder to get good, clear photos of them.

That first evening, we also saw the first of the many coatis we would see during our stay. These are bigger than the agouti and are less intimidated by the people. They would boldly walk along the walkways, sometimes surprisingly close to us. There is a sizeable population of these on the resort, and they had a lot of cute little youngsters with them. We would often see them digging in the grass for bugs, or hear them rustling through the leaves in the underbrush.

Not surprisingly, there were a LOT of reptiles on the resort. The largest and most obvious were the iguanas. We saw dozens of them at different places. The younger ones were bright green, but the colors changed as they got older and bigger, with the oldest being almost a golden color. We often found them sunning themselves on the walkways, and some were bold enough the just stay there as we walked by them.

The resort had several enclosures with animals in them for the guests to see. The first one we visited was the flamingo lagoon, where they had a sizeable flock of flamingos. They keep these inside an enclosed pen at night, but they are out feeding in their small lagoon during the day, where the guests can enjoy seeing these beautiful birds.

The other two enclosures held pools with crocodiles. The crocodiles were harder to see, as they were often camouflaged, either on the shore or even in the water. But we did manage to see a crocodile in each of the two enclosures. 

There were lots of other reptiles. We saw at least one snake, as well as lots of smaller lizards, including this one that was on the deck around the main pool.

There was also a wide variety of other birds around the property, but most of them were far to mobile to photograph easily. It was fascinating to see all of this wildlife in the midst of this large resort. I wonder if they are feeling more comfortable being out and about since this was the lowest of the low season, and the number of guests on the property was about as low as it gets. Perhaps we didn't see so many last time because the resort was more crowded.