Jamaica’s Black River Crocodile Adventure
time to explore
Jamaica is such a beautiful country and Negril as I said before has amazing beaches with crystal clear water. We would have been fine staying at our all-inclusive resort, because it had everything we needed. I always want to see all that a country has to offer when I visit and the Negril side of Jamaica was no exception.
Along the south coast of Jamaica
Comfortable and safe excursions are only achieved when you use a licensed and insured company to conduct your tour. There are many tour operators in Jamaica that I trust. We always felt totally safe and comfortable in our air-conditioned van, as we drove to the south coast of Jamaica for our Black River crocodile adventure.
We drove for about an hour, until we reached the town of Black River, located where the Black River flows into the Caribbean Sea. The Black River is the longest river in Jamaica and is a fantastic place to see many types of animals including egrets, cranes and of course crocodiles. In fact, the Black River is the main crocodile area in all of Jamaica. The river got its name from its dark color which is due to the tannins that stain the water, not pollution. In fact, I didn’t see any signs of contamination anywhere in Jamaica.
the crocodile hunter
Our tour began at the mouth of the black river where it flows into the Caribbean Sea. I think we had the best tour guide available, because he was entertaining, and as you’ll read and see, he did some extra things that we were told the other tour guides wouldn’t do, because it’s too dangerous! Now we were all in the boat heading up the Rio Negro in search of crocodiles. Our guide pointed out some egrets and some baby crocodiles that we saw while we were still getting started.
Looking for crocodiles!
Well the baby alligator was cute but we didn’t do this tour to see a baby alligator, we were looking for big alligators! Our guide took us upstream until we came to a crevasse in the river. The area on the left was the part of the river that came down from the mountains, and the water on the right was where the crocodiles used to congregate. It was not long before we saw a large crocodile lying in the sun on the river bank. We slowed the boat down and came to a complete stop. What happened next was so amazing!
WOW! Patricia the nice Crocodile! (if you have food)
I want to remind everyone that we were in nature. We weren’t in any crocodile farm, or in any zoo, we were right in the middle of the Rio Negro. Suddenly this crocodile, our guide named “Patricia” started swimming towards the boat. While she was swimming, our guide put his hand in the water and called out to the crocodile saying “come, come, come”, while he splashed the water with his hand. As she approached the boat, she put some chicken skin in the water and the crocodile suddenly pounced on the food with a big splash. She then let us pet the crocodile as she approached the boat. For some great photos of our meeting with Patricia, check out our blog post.
Our guide dropped Patricia off and showed us around a couple of the other regulars, and called them to the boat, but told us we couldn’t get that close to the others, because they had a tendency to jump into the boat, or any hand or arm. they were hanging from the ship. WOW!
a great lunch
It was a great time to interact with the crocodiles in their own environment. When we got back to the pier, we were greeted with an authentic Jamaican lunch! We all really enjoyed it and they had a very nice eating area that was comfortable. The tour was a great deal as we got to go on the crocodile adventure, they provided us with lunch, and then we were off to YS Falls!