We left the dock around 6:30pm so there was still some daylight but it was setting quickly. Chris and Miriam were our guides and were awesome!! Miriam has been staying at the same hostel so she got us super excited to go on the hunt! I learned that the different between crocodiles and alligators is their bites. Crocodiles have an overbite so their teeth come down on the outside of their snout, while alligators' teeth are all contained inside their mouths. This makes it harder to go croc hunting than alligator hunting because you can't attack a croc from the front and just grab their snout so they can't bit you because their teeth will cut your hands.
Once it got dark, Chris took the boat into random canals and Miriam would shine a flashlight down the canals on the banks under the mangroves. If there's a croc, then the flashlight will reflect off their eyes and it will glow red like the end of a cigarette. Miriam spotted a croc pretty quickly so Chris took us down the canal that she saw it. I'm not sure what I expected to happen next, but Miriam jumping into the water in her clothes/headlamp and swimming towards the croc was not what I expected. From the size of the orange glow they could tell that the croc was probably 3 or 4 feet so it was fine for Miriam to go in the water with it. If it's larger than that then they need to try to get it with some PVC pipe contraption onto the shore so they can wrestle it and tape its mouth shut. Miriam was in the water for awhile looking for this croc. It moved to the other side of the canal at one point which was kind of scary because it moves so silently that none of is knew until we saw the orange glow on the other side. She ended up losing it so she got back on the boat and we headed to a different canal. Crocs are able to stay underwater for 2 hours without coming up for air by shutting off chambers of their hearts that go to other parts of their bodies that aren't needed. So I guess at some point it's always easier to move on and try to find another croc.
The crocs mostly hang out in regions near where people live and dump their trash. The next canal that we went to had a ton of trash in it-it was disgusting! Chris spotted a croc and he couldn't tell how big it was so he docked the boat and jumped off of it onto the land to explore instead of going on the water. Unfortunately, the mangrove was too thick so he couldn't find it. Miriam spotted another croc pretty quickly that was lurking behind someone's house. It was dark so I couldn't see the house but we could see the family eating dinner outside and the kids started talking to us once they heard us talking about crocs. Miriam jumped into the water and spotted it but was facing it and she needed to get behind it in order to tackle it to the bottom of the canal to catch it. When she moved to get to the other side of it, she hit a branch, which spooked a dog. The dog barked and it spooked the croc which tried to swim away but ended up swimming into Miriam's legs. They said that the best thing to do when that happens is to be really still so the croc assumes you're a tree otherwise they may try to bite. After it hit her and swam away we lost it so we moved on to a different section of water.
At this point I think Chris and Miriam were pretty convinced that we weren't going to catch a croc that night so they took out when that they had on board that we didn't know about. Miriam had caught it wednesday night and they were releasing it when we were there. The croc was about 3 feet and we all got to take turns holding it and poking it and generallyjust annoying it. It was pretty easy to see that the croc got angrier and angrier because he was becoming harder and harder to hold on to.
As we were holding that croc, Chris spotted another croc in the water! They couldn't tell how big it was so Chris jumped into the water to investigate. He swam closer and we had our light shining in the area too so we could actually see it swim away from Chris. Chris kept following it until he had it corner and was approaching it from behind. Unfortunately it happened to be behind some bushes so I couldn't video it, but we saw Chris wrestle it to the ground and then start walking over to the boat holding a very angry 4 foot croc!!!!! Miriam taped its mouth closed so we could hold/poke/analyze this one too. This was a croc that had already been tagged but it had been a a few months ago so they said it was good to get more information on the crocs to see how fast they're growing and to make sure they're staying healthy in the area they're living. The croc looked healthy and even had some sort of skin parasites (that's a good thing I guess)! After they measured the crocs and we had played with them enough, they were released back into the water. Miriam released the 4 foot one and I released the 3 foot one. I held it while she took the tape off and then I put it into the water, quickly lifted my hands, and watched it swim away. All in all it was a really cool night and I learned a lot about crocs! I have lots of pictures but I haven't uploaded they yet so this one will have to suffice for now! 
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