At breakfast I had a visitor by the table–a big scaly one. As he hopped up on a wall in all his spiky multi-colored brilliance, the two-foot-long iguana—whose nickname around here is Pedro–looked like he’d just arrived from a feature role in Jurassic Park, bobbing his head like a master of all he surveyed.

Then along came Basil, short for brown Basilisk lizard, with a sail for a spine, who looked like the kind of long, creepy critter you’d find in a dark corner of a Harry Potter film. I was at the Arenas del Mar Rainforest Resort in Costa Rica before a Windstar cruise to get up close and personal with the animals. And what better way than to have a conversation over breakfast.