Cakes and Snakes

Thursdays are usually field trip days, but this week I was lucky enough to have two field trips, both involving some crazy wildlife. Tuesday, a few of us took a bus to TEC, the Costa Rican technical college, with some of the friends we met in the conversational English class. TEC has an ecotourism project on their campus that involves some local animals, so we got to see crocodiles, cayman and butterflies.

The mini-zoo was interesting, but the best part of the day by far was when one of the girls from class invited us to come have coffee afterward at a bakery her father owns.  We walked up our street to Tio Panchito and Fabiola's dad let us try a few different pastries (my favorite was gato, a not-to-sweet cake with a layer of jam in the center) and see how everything is made.  Talk about the perfect end to a great day.

We all exchanged e-mail addresses so we can keep in touch and make plans to hang out in town. I'm looking forward to seeing more local spots and having friends to show me what Ticos do in their time off. I think having these new friends may also save me the potential embarrassment of a few discoveries; on the way home from the bakery I pointed out a bar that seemed cool, and one of the guys informed me that it was a "how do you say, bar gay?". Good to know!

With volunteers and our new amigos behind Tio Panchito.

Today I went on a field trip to the Arenal Eco Zoo, just outside of La Fortuna. They have a ton of snakes and other reptiles and amphibians, including a Fir de Lance, the most venomous snake in Costa Rica. Our guide explained the process used to make anti-venom, which involves injecting a horse with venom and then extracting a serum from the horse's blood. Of the three families of venomous snakes in Costa Rica (vipers, corals and sea snakes), only the first two have an anti-venom, so don't touch any snakes you see in the ocean!

I didn't touch any venomous snakes, but I did hold a medium-sized snake, an iguana and an adorable tree-frog. Like so many of the amazing things here, it was hard to believe the frog was even real--it looked so much like the plastic ones in the States. But feeling its sticky webbed toes wrap around my finger was pretty convincing.

Iguana, with very sharp toes!

Tree frog, with toes like wet spaghetti.

After holding those animals, I was ready to move on to bigger things, like a giant boa constrictor that was more than twice my weight. I only held its head, but it was surprisingly heavy, and really smooth, not dry and scaly like I imagined it would be. This boa was born in captivity in Canada, but the idea that I could run into a snake like that in the wild is a little frightening.

280 pound boa constrictor- her name is Alyssa.

Speaking of running into snakes in the wild, our car ride home was interrupted by a snake having dinner in the road. A huge gray snake (maybe six feet long) had already halfway devoured another snake! The tail end of a Fir de Lance was still hanging out of its jaws. When it finally finishes eating, it will basically have another snake nested inside of itself.

Chowing down.

It really says something about the wealth of natural wonders in Costa Rica when you can leave a zoo or a museum and see something even more amazing outside on the street. Donde quiera que miremos, hay pura vida!