Recently we had friends staying with us that couldn’t believe how close we live to nature here in Puerto Morelos. For those of you not familiar with PoMo, we are a thin strip of land located between the Caribbean Sea and the mangrove. The mangrove or el manglar is a living, breathing, vibrant area filled with trees, plants and plenty of wildlife. Our home is only steps from the beach but it is even closer to the mangrove which gives us an amazing opportunity to see lots of birds and other animals.

The wildlife usually stays pretty close to home in the mangrove, but the other day we had a visitor in our garbage can. Now a raccoon trapped in your trash can may not be a big deal for some people, but we are a couple of city kids, so we were a little perplexed. Luckily a friend from Montreal had the stunning idea of just putting a palm branch into the trash can, so the little fellow ran up, out and back to the mangrove.

Crocodile Hanging in Puerto Morelos

The other day on a walk to our local supermarket we came across this happy fellow, sunning himself on one of the mangrove viewing points. He or she, we didn’t get close enough to find out, must be quite young as he was only about five feet long. He didn’t move a muscle, so we got a chance to take a good long look at him. Very cool. “Old school technology”as Rob calls it. When we passed back the same way about an hour later he was still in the same place still working on his tan. Our friends that had stayed with us just the week before had really wanted to see a crocodile, so this post is for them.