Trip 28
Nov. 3 to 11, 2018
Day 1: Saturday 3rd, 2018
My alarm clock goes off at 4:15 am. I’m being picked up buy a car service to take me to the airport at 4 AM , on November 3rd, for my 28th Herping trip to Costa Rica. One thing about this trip that is unusual is that no one on this trip has been on a trip with me before. So this time I’ll have the opportunity of making a few new friends, which doesn’t take long on a Herping trip. I arrived at the airport in Costa Rica at 10:02 am their time. Immigration and customs was a breeze. 20 minutes later I was arriving at the Hotel Aeropuerto, I’ve been having our groups stay there for several years and all of the staff knows me well and how glad we will be back for another stay. Some of the Herpers for this trip came a day or two early. One was here now so I went to meet Pete from AZ and we talked Herps for a while. A little later Noam, Ofek (Father & Son) from Israel and Lucy from England. These 3 made arrangements to meet in Madrid and fly directly to San Jose, CR. Ben and Bo (brothers) came in from MN. the day before and were taking a tour of San Jose. Finally our last Herper, Trent from IL. showed up and we all had dinner together.
Day 2: Sunday 4th, 2018
Sunrise is about 5:30 a.m. and I’m not far behind; the problem is they don’t start serving breakfast until 7 o’clock. But there’s a coffee maker at in all the rooms, and I’m soon drinking a cup of black coffee with all of the richness Costa Rica puts into it. At 7 o’clock we are all meet in the restaurant with our plates full of Black beans and rice along with pineapple, papaya and watermelon. The girl from reception came told me that our cars were there. Today I decided I will have two drivers for each car. It took some time we have the drivers show their passports and drivers license. Next we had to inspect the cars so we can bring him back in same condition as they are this morning. This is the first time I’ve had cars delivered at 8 AM; that would put us at Lodge a bit before lunch. After couple of hours drive I thought we needed a break. The place that I chose was Lands of Love. This place was owned by people from Israel and since we had Noam and Ofek with us and they are from Israel for the trip, I thought it would be a great place to stop. They had quite a Conversation and found out that they remembered Noam’s father from 5 five years ago when he was in Costa Rica doing a filming. We paid up and were on our way. We were making good time until we ran into a detour; apparently a bridge was out and we had to go quite a ways out of the way to get back on the right road. Usually on trips I stop in a grocery store on the way for a bathroom break and let people buy rubber boots. With this detour I have no idea whether the store is ahead of us or are we passed it already. We keep heading for La Fortuna when we got there, the first store I picked had boots for sale, everybody that needed them got them there. A half an hour later we were driving up the hill to the lodge. I went into the office and got keys for our rooms. I handed them out and said after you get your gear from the cars into your room and then meet me in the restaurant for lunch. Soon we were all at our table looking over the menus. I explain to everyone that there were items on the menu that would cost them extra if they ordered them. For example jumbo shrimp and steak. Three beverages went with the meal tropical fruit juice, coffee or tea. If you order a Coke or a beer you pay for it and you pay now! Other than that enjoy your meal! As we were eating, we noticed the clouds were heading our way. Normally after lunch I would take the group on a trail through the primary and secondary forest. But now it looked like it could rain any minute, so we held off on that until it cleared up, it didn’t, so we will meet at 6 o’clock for dinner. I drove down to the gate to Pick up my friend Miguel who will herp with us every night of the trip. At 6:30 we would meet with him from my room with our gear ready to go, by then we had a light rain. Noam found the first
snake of the trip it was beautiful Calico Snake. With the snake came the rain. The rains came and didn’t stop. After all we’re in the rain forest, but we needed a break once in a while, we finally got it about 10:30 pm. We did manage to find some snakes here and there. We got 1 Jumping Viper, 1 Blunt Head Tree snake, 1 Calico snake, 2 Rainforest Pit Vipers, 4 Cloudy Snail-eaters, 2 Eyelash Viper, 1 Fer de Lance, Not as much as I was hoping for, but I’m grateful for that considering the conditions. The rain was pouring so hard that when we were walking uphill it was like we were walking through a river. So, we came up with a total of 12 snakes for Sunday.
Day 3: Monday, 5th 2018
Monday started off with us being able to see half of the volcano and our group kept watching the weather hoping to see the full volcano today, it almost happened but the cloud still hung on top. We did a walk on the paved trail we saw a few frogs, a lizard or two but no snakes which is typical in the daytime. We had one of our young Herpers, Isaac to decided to do it little herpes on his own. Typically we find very few snakes in the daytime. But, Isaac didn’t want to wait till dark so he set off by himself pretty soon he came back and ask me if the snake he caught was it dangerous. No, it was not dangerous; it’s just a small Banded Coffee Snake. I told him that none of the snakes that are pencil thin were not dangerous except the Coral snake and that he could recognize with no problem. Isaac had four snakes before dark which amazed me. One of his snakes was a Parrot Snake 5 or 6 feet long.
This guy was new to me in this area, I said it was a great find. We headed out to one of the fields, and we started finding this and that here and there. Then a large Parrot snake was spotted in a high Fern Tree we were standing right under. I ask Pete if he could pull the tree down lower with his Snake hook? He said he thought he could ; I said make it fast. Down came the tree and I put one hand under the snake and the other on top of him, somehow the snake head was in my left hand. He could bite me. Yea!! This was the second Parrot Snake and they looked about he same in size. Today we had a good Monday with a total of 21 snakes for the day. 1 Fer de Lance Caught by Issac.
1 Blunt-headed Tree Snake. 4 Cat-eyed Snake. 2 Mexican Parrot Snakes. 2 Banded Coffee Snakes. 4 Rainforest Hognose Snakes. 7 Cloudy Snail-eaters. A total of 21 Snakes and NO RAIN for Monday.
Day 4: Tuesday, 6th 2018
Tuesday: tonight our target area was the Rain Forest Trail. In past trips we have not been hunting the Rain Forest Trail at night. It’s about two hour hike, maybe a little more because were walking slowly there’s so much to look at. I decided that I was going to focus on the vines hanging from the trees. In the past five or six times we have found Eyelash Vipers moving up-and-down on the vines, but not tonight. I believe the first snake we found was a Brown Spot -bellied Snake. But it was the last snake on this trail that came out to be a big surprise. We came to a place where we have to cross a small bridge and once we’re on the other side we would go up the stairway and a short distance away we would be finish with the trail. As we were walking to the bridge someone spotted a Snake in the water. I had never seen a Water Snake in my many trips to Costa Rica. But ,we had one now in a pond that was about 3 feet deep. Everybody was trying to get them with a snake hook but that not going to work. Snake has to be grabbed her by hand. Lucy took off her boots and jumped in the water and she got close to snake and forced him to go under the bridge. The water muddied up real quick and we couldn’t find him. Lucy kept walking around looking the best she could but up on the bridge. Pete looked and saw the snake a few inches below the bridge and grabbed the snake. To me this was a big deal, I never expected to find one of these water snakes. It is a first for CRHA.
Before we left for our hikes tonight, Trent found a Red Scorpion-eater, but his was brown. In fact I thought it was a Mussurana but more checking found me wrong. I been after a live Mussurana for many years and it has been many years since I have seen a Scorpion Snake. If you want something bad enough, you’ll invent it, next time I’ll keep my mouth closed until I’m positive. I found two of these species in Panama and one in Costa Rica all dead on the road. I had been hoping to find a live one for long time and tonight was the night. Another species is to be added to the first time list of Costa Rica Herping Adventure’s of snakes found over the years. So, Tuesday was pretty good to us snake wise. We got 1 Eyelash, 1 Brown Spot-belled Snake, 3 Blunt-Headed Snake, 2 Cat-eyed Snakes, 1 CR Coral Snake, 1 Prawn Snake, (Hydromorphus concolor) CR Water-snake, 1 Banded Coffee Snake, 2 Red Coffee Snake,1 Red Scorpion Snake, 1 Halloween Snake, 2 Ringed Snail-eater, 3 Cloudy Snail-eater. Ending up with 19 for the day. No rain ;we’re Happy!
Day 5: Wednesday, 7th 2018
Wednesday:
The plan for Wednesday night was to work a field that we usually do pretty good with Eyelash Vipers. One good thing about the field in its present condition is that there’re no cattle to deal with.. But there is a cattle problem ; that is in the rainy season the cows that are there sink in the ground and leave holes that you can trip in very easy. I managed to stay upright from beginning to end. It took a while , but we found our first Eyelash Viper. A little later someone spotted a small Eyelash on a weed growing out of the ground; he was about 7 inches off the ground just waiting for a frog to hop by.
We had found a few snakes during the day but night is when it happens. We found 7 eyelash vipers, 1 Blunthead Tree Snake, 2 Cat-eyed Snake, 2 Rain Forest Hognose Snakes, 1 Ringed Snail-eater Snake, 9 Cloudy Snail-eater. Again no rain, lucky for us with 22 Snakes for the day.
Day 6: Thursday, 8th 2018
`Tonight we had a special request from Lucy who came away from England with the hopes of seeing dart frogs. Lucy has to leave Costa Rica tomorrow because of her schedule at work. Where were usually hunt, we don’t find the dart frog. but another place a 15 minute drive away we have a 50/50% chance of seeing one. So we were off to red frog mountain (my name for it). Tonight we got three cat eye snakes there and no dart frogs. If we went a little further we would’ve had a better chance of finding a dart frog. But we ran into a big herd of cattle Half of them laying on the ground and we decided not to disturb them. So we tried another field and did better. . Bo found the smallest banded coffee snake I’ve ever seen, he later found an Eyelash Viper. For Thursday we ended up with 1 No ID,3 Eyelash, 4 Cat-eye Snakes, 1 Halloween Snake, 1 Hognose Viper, 1 Ringed Snail-eater, 1 Lichen Colored Snail-eater, 9 Cloudy Snail-eater, and 1 Orange-Bellied Litter Snake.
Gray Earth Snake ~~~ Geophis brachycephalus
(Take about cool this guy got a lot of it), it is also is a new find for Costa Rica Herping Adventures, the second for this trip. No rain and 27 snakes for today!!
Day 7: Friday, 9th 2018
Today is our last day in the field; tomorrow is a travel day. We have two goals in mind for today, one is to get over Hundred Snakes on this trip. This is our 28th trip and on only three times before have we gone over a Hundred snakes for a trip. We need only 4 Snakes to reach our first goal of a hundred. And we need 25 Snakes to beat the record of 120 Snakes that was established on Trip 25, in May of this year. To beat them we need 25 Snakes today. Can we do it? We will see soon! I found a Bird Snake before dinner. Plus we had a few snakes found early today. We worked hard to find enough snakes to meet our goal and we found our 25th snake for the day. Beating Trip 27 by 2 Snake! ~~~ A couple of things that happened on the last night hunt. 1 Trent found a small Fer de Lance and got some nice photos. An interesting item about him: He caught his first snake in his life on this trip, the Red Scorpion Snake. He is a Herper but with lizards, he came on the trip with the hope of seeing Lizards in the wild. We don’t see a lot on lizards on this trip because of the elevation; we are at 3000 feet more or less. Lizards like little more heat in their life. The other thing is I was walking up to Pete and Isaac to see if they had anything new. When coming up to Pete, I saw him make a quick step to the side and looking down at the ground. He had just found a coral snake that went into a drainage Area. Pete jumped down and shined his light into the area where the snake went into, he could see it. He put his hook in and was able to pull it out, the snake went back in, he tried again, and the snake went back again. Next time I was next to Pete when he pulled again :this time I stepped very lightly on the snake and Isaac, Pete and I got him into the bag for photos tomorrow. Also we found night lizards and managed to catch one for photos. For Friday we had 3 Eyelash Vipers, 1 Fer de Lance, 2 Blunthead Tree Snakes, 2 Cat-eye Snakes, 1 Coral Snake, 1 Orange-bellied Litter Snake, 2 Calico Snakes, 1 Hognose Pit-viper, 1 Bird Snake, 4 Red-ringed Snail-eaters, 9 Cloudy Snail-eater, 1 Elegant Litter Sn.
Urotheca guentheri ~~~ Orange-bellied Litter Snake
New Species
Saturday, 10th 2018:Well, each trip gets to this point – a long ride back to The Hotel Aeropuerto so tomorrow we can catch our planes back home or do whatever our plans are for the next part of our Costa Rica trip. As I am packing, I get a call from Miguel who wants to warn me that there is a bridge out and I won’t be able to go back my usual way. The Same thing happened two to trips ago, I wondered if it was the same bridge. The time before I was into The trip an hour and a half, and I came to the bridge where we had to turn around losing three hours of travel time. He gave me the directions on the cities that I need to go through to get back to the hotel. After driving an hour and half, we decided to take a break one of our guys was getting a little carsick. So we stopped at a restaurant and we will bought a little bit of food to keep us busy well we are driving. I saw a bag of banana chips the bag had no writing on it so I knew they were homemade and brought them right away. I knew they would be good but they were great. While waiting for everybody, I walked out and looked at the jungle across the street and decided to walk over there and maybe I can find one more snake. That was just too much to ask for, but I did find a bunch dart frogs, the red and blue pumilio. I called to the rest of the guys and told him they were there and we spent another 15 minutes taken photos. Right place at the right time, that’s all it takes. We got back to the hotel and we had dinner together for the last time on this trip.
Species List
| Trip 28 Nov 3 to 10/2018 | |||||
| Species | Common Name | Number | |||
| Atropoides mexicana | Jumping Viper | 1 | |||
| Bothriechis schlegelii | Eyelash Viper | 14 | |||
| Bothrops asper | Fer de Lance | 3 | |||
| Coniophanes fissidens | Brown Spotbelly | 1 | |||
| Imantodos cenahoa | Blundhead Tree Sn. | 7 | |||
| Leptodeira septentrionalis | Northern Cateye Sn. | 16 | |||
| Leptophis mexicanus | Mexican Parrot Sn. | 2 | |||
| Micrurus nigrocinctus | CR Coral Sn. | 3 | |||
| Hydromorphus concolor | Prawn Sn. | 1 | New | ||
| Urotheca guentheri | Orange-bellied Sn. | 1 | New | ||
| Ninia maculate | Banded Coffee Sn. | 3 | |||
| Ninia sebae | Red Coffee Sn. | 2 | |||
| Pliocercus euryonus | Halloween Sn. | 2 | |||
| Oxyrhopus petola | Calico Sn. | 3 | |||
| Porthidium nasutum | Hognose Viper | 10 | |||
| Pseustes poecilonotus | Bird Sn. | 1 | |||
| Sibon annulatus | Red Ringed Snail-eater | 4 | |||
| Sibon longifrenis | Lichen Snail-eater | 4 | |||
| Sibon nebulatus | Cloudy Snail-eater | 41 | |||
| Stenorrhina freminvilli | Northern Scorpion-eater | 1 | |||
| Geophis brachycepjalui | Gray Earth Sn. | 1 | New | ||
| Geophis hoffmanni | Hoffman’s Earth Sn. | 1 | |||
| 22 Species | |||||
| 122 Snakes | |||||
| 3 New Species | |||||
Trip 28 Group Photo
Ofek, Ben, Jo, Jim, Isaac, Noma, Trent, Lucy, Pete