Lac des Crocodiles

3/4 of the way to Boali is this little park called Crocodile Lake. The name is pretty much self-explanatory: it’s a lake full of crocodiles. The whole thing is really bizarre, starting with driving about 10 km off of the main road, through a series of these super small villages along a narrow dirt road in the middle of the bush to get to the park. Kids came running out of their clay brick huts to wave (or stare).

After about 15 minutes of driving, you arrive at the entrance (which is this totally overgrown driveway that, unless this old man hadn’t come out to meet us, would have led us to believe the place wasn’t there).

He charges you the entrance fee to the park ($2.50/person) and forces you to buy live chickens on a string ($5/chicken). We only opted for one (but ended up getting another one on the spur of the moment because of some arcane crocodile “fairness” doctrine that said that it was unfair that one crocodile should eat while the other feasted on delicious chicken). Anyway, the video that follows isn’t really material you should watch around a meal (or if you feel bad about watching animals get hurt).

On the walk down, the guy slapped the chicken into his hand to make it squawk . . . for some reason I found this as upsetting or more than watching the chicken get eaten by the crocodile.

As for the soundtrack . . . it just seemed like a good fit.

3 Responses to “Lac des Crocodiles”

  1. Kelly says:

    Love the music selection. So did the other croc get to eat a chicken too? Fair is fair!

  2. Laurence says:

    She did get her own chicken, but I totally missed it (it wasn’t nearly as dramatic anyway).

  3. allyson says:

    Brilliant! Four stars!