Costa Rican Crocodiles

Costa Rica's a magical place  for me, full of jaw-dropping wonder like this:

But also mixed in with what I can only endearingly call the Central American version of the Andy Griffith Show. I'll give you an example. In the late 90's we were being driven to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica by one of my uncles. We stopped at a bridge over a languid river that looked like this:

I googled costa rican crocs, and these image came up. It looks like the same place. Now, that top croc has to be somewhere between 12 and 15 feet, head to toe, and as I stood by the bridge I noticed that there were no signs anywhere saying, DANGER! CROCODILES! or something like that. There was a car tire that lay next to one of the big fella that was dwarfed by the croc's skull.

There was a small restaurant next to the bridge, the lagoon. No fence, no nothin'. I went in and asked the guy that ran the restaurant why there was no sign to keep everyone away from the crocs, and the guy turned to me and said something like, "Why would there need to be a sign there? You'd have to be crazy to swimming in there with all those crocodiles! They'll eat you!"

This image does not surprise me in the least.