Costa Rica Adventure: things that go slither in the night.

Erick took us hiking along the road that night; the real creepy jungle animals come out when the sun goes down. We were told to wear long pants and tall boots just in case those venomous snakes showed up - yikes!

We hadn't even made it off the lodge's property when we came across our first snake. It was not venomous, but it was a big "False Fer-de-lance." Erick picked it up with a stick and tried to find a frog for it to eat, but we never quite got the two together.

A few steps off the property, we came across a scorpion. Erick held its spiky tail down and put it into a black bucket, then shined an ultraviolet light on it. Scorpion bodies are fluorescent.

We came across several more snakes slithering across the gravel road. We did not see any venomous snakes, and I was definitely okay with that. We checked out some cool lightning bugs and saw lots of bull frogs and toads.

Erick stopped in his tracks at one point and said he heard red-eyed tree frogs mating. He turned off his headlamp, dove into the bushes, and rustled around for a few minutes before turning his light on again and announcing that he had found them. Sure enough, there they were.

We hiked to a lagoon and saw this big creepy spider the size of my hand. It is so big that it eats fish. Scott and Erick saw crocodiles from across the lagoon, but I couldn't see them ("Just look between those branches there." "Ummm, where?"). They plotted to find some the next morning while kayaking.

We hiked around to a tree where Erick had seen a sloth earlier in the day; it was still there, in the same tree (fuzzy blob above).

The next morning we continued the crocodile hunt by climbing into kayaks and paddling around the lagoon. We never found them, but we did see lots of beautiful birds.

Erick told us he would show us some crocodiles if we gave him a ride to his mother's house in Puerto Jiminez on our way out. We agreed, not only for the crocs but also because we felt a lot better about getting through those rivers with this guy in the car with us.