Trip 27
May 12 to 19, 2018
Day 1: Saturday, May 12, 2018
Trip 27 started for me with the trip to the David airport. Soon we were in the air on our flight to Panama City. I had a few hours layover before my trip to San Jose, Costa Rica. The flight takes just a little over one hour but was enough Copa Airline gave us a lunch. Once we were on the ground before picking up my bag, I stopped at Kobi to activate my Costa Rica sim card. I had to wait a few minutes but soon as I saw my bag on the carousel and picked it up, I headed to customs. I ran my bag through the machine and all was well and I was heading for the exit. A few minutes more and I was in a taxi on my way to the Hotel Aeropuerto. I checked in at reception and got a room key and I asked of anyone else from my group was here already. I was told that Dave had already checked in and was in the restaurant. I went to the room and dropped off my suitcase. Then I went looking for Dave; I found him and we introduced ourselves. Dave came a long way from Alaska where he’s been working for the last seven years. He said it was good to be enjoying the Costa Rica weather and didn’t have to worry about minus 50 below zero. To me it was like he was talking a different language. The Florida boy like me doesn’t understand 50 below zero. Pretty soon Tim and his twin sons age 16 showed up and got checked in. We had one more person Craig who is going to come in after my bedtime and I would have to see him in the morning. We took a table in the restaurant and our little group of five started talking about our herping experiences and background. Soon we were all yawning; travel days are tough. Tim and I shared room, his two boys Connor and Matthew shared a room and Dave would share a room with Craig when he arrived.
Day 2: Sunday, May 13, 2018
The sun comes up early in the tropics, around 5:30 AM. I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, pulled out my Pilates mat and started my 25 minute routine. Tim was up and out before I finished my routine. I headed for the restaurant for my first cup of coffee. Pretty soon our group was there and we got to meet Craig for the first time. We had a typical breakfast with a lot of tropical fruits. Mangoes being in season at this time, we got a plates full of mangoes ;at least I did – I never pass those guys. We had at least an hour before the cars would be delivered. Had to get the forms filled out and show passports and drivers licenses. We were on our way a little after 9 AM, we made our way down the Pan American highway and made our turn to go through San Ramon. Now we’re in the mountains for the next two 2 to 2 1/2 hours. In my car Dave and Craig were both very interested in all the birds they are seeing. It seems that both had studied up on the birds of Costa Rica because they were naming them off pretty well. We stopped at a roadside restaurant; I needed to buy bottled water and while we were loading, across the street from us toucans came flying into the tree. Out came the cameras and we had a 15 minute delay for a little photography. Next the boys spotted the Passerini’s Tanagers and the Crimson-collared Tanagers, and a little wildlife excitement meters were going off the scale, I wonder what’s going to happen when they see their first snake. Finally as we were getting out of the high mountains, we came into a little town where I usually stop for people to buy rubber boots if they need them and take a little bathroom break. We’re getting to a place where we can see Volcan Arenal, but today the clouds are so low you cannot see the volcano at all. We will be at the Lodge in a half hour and it won’t be too soon for me. I pulled off the road and talked to the guard at the gate as we have reservations. Finally I started the 3 km climb up the brick paver road with a hair pen turn or two to the Lodge. We pulled into the back parking and I told everyone to follow me to the office to get our room assignment and key. Pete, the final person on this trip, came to the Lodge yesterday. This is Pete’s fifteenth trip with CRHA, Pete and I have been friends since 2002. He knows his way around CR as well as I do, maybe better. He usually comes early and/or stays late to get the most out of his airfare. A quick lunch and a tour of the rain forest walk produced no snakes. We would meet in the restaurant at 6 o’clock and go from there. We ordered our evening meals and worked our way through that. Everyone was anxious to get into the field. I got a call from Miguel at the gate so I hopped into my car and drove to the gate and picked him up and drove back to the Restaurant. On our way up to the Lodge we saw two juveniles Collared Peccary’s run across the road in front of us.
They were both whiteish in color, as adults they will be completely black except for the white collar. Once at the top I returned to the restaurant to finish my dinner. Miguel said he was going to hunt around since he already ate. Soon we were on the trail, there was a light rain but certainly not enough to slow us down, the area where we were working tonight was easy walking.
Soon someone yelled snake! Pete had found of a Rainforest Hognose Pitviper. The snake was in an area that that we could only get one or two people for photos at a of time. After the first snake we had a busy time for 15 minutes where people were finding them pretty quick it was just one here and one another there, it worked out real nice. Then we hit a dry spell for a a while and then it picked up again. We ended the night with 3 eyelash vipers, 1 Banded Coffee Snake, 1 Red Coffee Snake, 2 Halloween Snakes, 1 Rainforest Hognose Pitviper, 8 Cloudy Snail-eater. For a total of 16 snakes. This is good for the first night; not great but good; our best record on a first day’s catch is 25 snakes.
Day 3: Monday, May 14, 2018
First after breakfast on Monday I usually take the group on a hike down the hill behind the restaurant. This helps the herper orient themselves to Lodge property. Once in a while we pick up a snake or two but usually we just see some lizards and a amazing array of birds. When we get to the end of the trail, there’s a rancho with the view of Lake Arenal and the Arenal Volcano. We spent quite a bit of time at the Rancho because the guys were watching a pair Swallow-tail Kites mixed in with several vultures and the group had one Black and White Hawk Eagle. When we decide to go back, it’s all uphill, so it takes us about twice as long to get back if it did going down. The grounds down here haven’t been trimmed, which makes it difficult going off the path to look in trees that may hold snakes. Once we got back to the top I told the guys we’d meet at lunch. The rest of the afternoon everybody just went their own way, doing a little hunting here and there; no one found anything in the afternoon. Around six we gathered table in the restaurant. I got a call from the gate and headed down to pick Miguel up. On the way down I saw a small coral snake, stopped the car, quickly backed up so I could see him in the headlights. But he made it off the road before I was able to get to him. I picked up Miguel and brought him to the top. He said he would hunt around, but when I finished dinner, he got a cat eye -snake. The area we hunting tonight Can be really good sometimes and others that’s not so hot. We were hunting around the wood-shop and Miguel spotted a coral snake in a pile of leaves. I had my snake hook on him and a few other guys got the hook on him but in the leaves he just wiggled and wiggled and got under the leaves and we lost him. A while later we did catch a blunted-headed tree snake which was on one of the twins must see list. A friend of his works with this species back in the states. He was real excited when I handed him the Little fellow we caught. I alway love it when someone has a target snake that they want to see in the wild and we find that snake on their trip.
For the night we found two coral snakes, five Cat-eye snakes, one cloudy Sibon. And the Imantodes cenchoa. Nine snakes total for the day.
Day 4, Tuesday~~~May 15th. 2018
Sunday night we got 16 snakes I was hoping to keep that going Monday’s total was only nine snakes and that’s low. I was thinking of this before I got to breakfast: 25 snakes in two days ; if we continue on that, it will only end up with 75 snakes for the 6 days hunting. We’ll just have to see how the day goes and do the best we can. After breakfast Pete and I decided we’d go on a little hike. We were on our way when Pete discovered he forgot his camera and went to get it. I kind of waited around and I started back to meet him halfway. When I saw Pete, he told me that he caught a Bird Snake on the way back to get his camera. While we were talking , Dave and Craig came up and we told them about Pete’s good luck. Somebody said to go get the snake so that they could take some pictures of it. When he came with the bag, I could tell he was a decent sized snake, actually about five and a half foot with a lot of yellow in color pattern. This Bird Snake was lively and full of life with an attitude that went with it. Craig was holding him and somehow the snake turned on him and got a bite on his arm.
I took the snake holding him by the tail and he bit me on the ankle. This was the first time I’ve been bitten in about five or six trips and the last snake bite was also a Bird Snake. You may find this surprising, but most of the snakes we come across don’t even try to bite and very few even threatened to. Once you try to control its head, it is a different story and you will likely get bit. Tim and sons Connor and Mathew were not around at the time were taking photo. But they got to play with the Bird Snake later in the day. We got a snake in the day time which always good, I know we have to work hard tonight. Once we finished dinner, we got our gear and headed out to an area that we generally don’t work. It was not long before we had our first snake of the night, it was a Cat-Eye; we spread out and every few minutes somebody was yelling Snake and we would go from one place to the another to see what had been found. Pete spotted a nice size Coral Snake, and everyone pitched in to try to keep this one from getting away. Today I had mentioned that one way we would have a best chance of catching one was if the conditions are right to try stepping very lightly on the snake. We tried that on this guy and it stopped him from digging in. Pete had a pair of kitchen tongs that he used to pick up the snake. We had a snake bag held open by 3 snake hood to make a triangle opening at the top of the bag. With Pete handy kitchen tool he dropped it into the bag and we had our CR Coral Snake for photos.
Within a couple of hours we were at 20 Snakes. I started talking about our best day ever which was 25 snakes, and of course that made everybody look harder; they wanted to set a new record and they did; at the end of the night we are at 30 snakes. Everyone was high-5ing each other because we did a really great job. 1 Bird Snake, 3 Banded Coffee Snakes, 8 Northern Cat-eyes Snakes, 3 Red Coffee Snakes, 3 Eyelash Vipers, 11 Cloudy Snail-eaters and 1 Spot-bellied Snake. We don’t find the Spot-belly Snakes very often, this is our 8th one in 27 trips.
It had been a Great Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Day 5, Wednesday~~~May 16th. 2018
After yesterday’s record number of 30 snakes in a day, could we do it again. Well, the way I look at it is at 55 snakes with three days behind us and in three days in front of us, we are definitely on track to break the record that goes back to Trip 23, April 30 to May 7, 2016; that record was 104 snakes for the week. Yes we can do it; but the question is will we get over the 104 mark? Time will tell? We worked hard that night was a lot of determination to have a good night.
There was one situation that comes to mind: Miguel spotted a coral snake in an area of a lot of Leaf litter. This guy was a nice size probably 30/36 inches and he was moving fast to get under the leaves. I put my snake stick on him as did others, he kept moving and moving and getting deeper and deeper into the leaf litter. One thing that I know from experience is that Coral Snakes are very hard to pin down because they never stop moving and they can keep trying to dig in and most the time they get away as this one did. I knew this was going to happen and talked about it to the group the main reason is because I left my Coral Snake gloves back in the states. I have welding gloves and I can safely handle a coral snake with. If I can get my gloves out of the backpack and on my hands before he dives under, sometimes I will get him. With Coral Snakes this is my motto is “No Gloves-No Snake”. It was true again tonight. We also found a new species for CRHA. It was a very small snake completely black. It turned out to be a Black Blind Snake (Epictia goudotii). And this was a new species for Costa Rica Herping Adventures.
We found these two I mentioned plus 3 Cat-eye Snakes, 6 Eyelash Vipers, 8 Cloudy Snail-eaters, 1 Red Coffee Snake, 1 Parrot Snake, 1 Lichen-colored Snail-eater. 22 Snakes for the day, very, very respectable.
Day 6, Thursday~~~May 17th. 2018
Dave and I decided to take a little hike into an area I had not been to before. We started in the afternoon, and one of the things we found was totally unexpected; it was an old sign when there was no Lodge. But, only a restaurant probably 30 years ago maybe more.
Tonight’s area has been good and bad. I’m hoping for excellent. As things turned out, we did the best ever in this area. It wasn’t excellent, but with 18 Snakes I was very happy. We got 8 cloudy snail-eaters, 4 Eyelash Vipers, 2 Cat-eyed snakes, 3 Blunthead tree snakes and Dave found his Fer-de-Lance that he had been looking the whole trip. When he found it, he yelled Fer-de-Lance so loud they could hear him in San Jose. At the end of the night we had up to 96 snakes. Do you think we will break the record of 104 tomorrow? Yes, me too!
Day 7, Friday,~~~May 18th. 2018
At breakfast everyone was smiling and talking about breaking the record; we have to get eight snakes to tie the record and nine or more to break the record. Off and on all day the talk was about breaking the record. I heard thing like “all we have is keep hunting until we break the record”.
Standing Tim, Conner, & Matt. Seating Pete, Craig, Jim & Dave
At dinner that night I told everyone that tonight we are going to Red Frog mountain. Last trip we went there on Friday night just like we are going to do tonight. But the last time we were there we hunted and we found one snake. I spotted an Eyelash Viper that kept us from getting skunked at that stop. I said if we didn’t come across something in the first half hour, we’d pack if up and head for somewhere else. That stopped the chatter for a little while. But we got there and it took 20 minutes before we got our first snake. We stayed in the area and did quite well. We left excited to work another area, and on our way out we found a small coral snake crossing the road, we stopped and took some pictures of him. Going to this place we drive the cars; it’s the only time we have to drive. If we walked, it would take over an hour. It was not long before we had the record broken; now we had to add some on to keep the record. Everyone was really enthused it was like we were playing the last quarter of the Super Bowl game and we were ahead and wanted to stay that way. We found 1 Rainforest Hognose Viper, 7 Cloudy Snail-eaters, 5 Cat-eye Snake, 8 Eyelash Vipers, 1 CR Coral Snake, 1 Lichen-colored Snail-eater, 1 Red Ringed Snail-eater. 24 Snakes Total!
This is the 3rd time our total snake count for the trip has reached 100 or more.
Trip 22 ~~~ 101 with 10 Herpers
Trip 23 ~~~ 104 with 10 Herpers
Trip 27 ~~~ 120 with 7 Herpers
Day 8, Saturday~~~May 19th. 2018
After breakfast I told the group we’d be leaving between 9:30 and 10 o’clock. Dave came to the rooms telling he just found Coral Snake. When he went to the ice machine, he came across the Coral Snake near the machine. A few more photos never hurt. And that brought our total 120 snakes for Trip 27.
Today’s a travel day and we would be leaving and heading back to the Hotel Aeropuerto. Some will stay in Costa Rica for a while, others will fly out Sunday and head for home, wherever home may be! This trip no doubt was the best trip to date for Costa Rica Herping Adventures. I congratulate each and every member of this trip for their competitive spirit and positive attitude that made it possible to hold the most snake in a day (30). And most snakes for a trip.(120)
The best trip ever is in the old snake bag!!
Jim ~~~
Trip Statistics
| Species | Common Name | ||
| Bothriechis schlegelli | Eyelash Viper | 24 | |
| Bothrops asper | Fer-de-Lance | 1 | |
| Urotheca euryzonus | Halloween Sn. | 2 | |
| Sibon annulatus | Red-ringed Snail-eater | 1 | |
| Coniophanes fissidens | Brown Spotbelly Sn | 1 | |
| Imantodoes canahoa | Blunthead Tree Sn. | 4 | |
| Leptodeira septentrionalis | Northern Cayeye Sn. | 23 | |
| Sibon nebulatus | Cloudy Snail-eater | 43 | |
| Sibon longifrenis | Lichen-colored Snail-eater | 2 | |
| Ninia sebae | Red Coffee Sn. | 5 | |
| Ninia psephota | Banded Coffee Sn. | 4 | |
| Porthidium nasutum | Rainforest Hognose Pitviper | 2 | |
| Epictia goudotii (New Species) | Black Blind Sn. | 1 | |
| Pseustes poecilonotus | Bird Snake | 1 | |
| Leptophis ahaetulla | Parrot Sn. | 1 | |
| Micrurus mosquitensis | Costa Rican Coral Snake | 5 | |
| Trip 27 ~~~ Total 120 Snakes !! | |||