After sauntering across ancient footbridges suspended roughly 100 feet above the cape coast jungle floor our adrenaline was pumping. After stepping on a pile of ants, almost getting eaten alive, and squealing my way of the jungle slapping my feet like I was possessed, tired was an understatement of my feelings.

On the way back to Cape Coast we stopped to see crocodiles at a small rest-stop-like restaurant. I lazily hopped out of the bus and was stopped dead in my tracks. “No way,” I said multiple times to no one in particular. Lying in the grass next to the restaurant, in no sort of contained area, was a crocodile longer than I am tall. It looked exactly like I had always imagined. I inched towards it so I was five feet and pulled out my new lens (which I call my baby lens for ironic reasons) and started snapping away. The detail of its eyes brought me back to the dinosaur ages and send rippling chills though my arms. I got closer than my safety bubble allowed me because looking through my camera gave me an invisible safety shield (I literally screamed looking back on my pictures, seeing how close I had been.) The waiters at the restaurant prodded us: “touch it touch it!” I got close to a baby crocodile sitting on its mother and watched crocodiles in the water (just hoping one would snap at a bird, animal planet style). The time flew by and I had to leave my reptile friends sooner than I wanted. It wasn’t until the next day that we were told a student from CAL got their face bitten by a croc just a week before we visited.