Between a Crocodile and a Poisonous Snake...

Dear Dr. Thacker,

I've had a lot of interesting experiences so far in Costa Rica, but this weekend definitely wins the award for most exciting experience of my life...

Hannah and I had a long weekend because today is a Costa Rican national holiday (el Día de la Anexión de Guanacaste). We've been wanting to go to the beach (cheap entertainment!!), so we decided to pack our backpacks and head for Manuel Antonio, a beautiful beach and national park on the Pacific Coast.  On Friday morning we took the public bus from San José to Quepos and then a smaller bus from Quepos to Manuel Antonio. Fairly non-eventful so far.  

When we got to the beach, we wandered around the town for a while, trying to find our hostel. Our friend Liz, who's staying at the house with us, was able to make reservations through her language school (our school doesn't do that...jerks. lol), so she had made the reservations for us. However, she somehow failed to tell us (and we somehow failed to ask) the name of the hostel. So we had to show several people the receipt before someone recognized it as the Tico Lodge and told us where it was. Lesson #1: Make sure you know where you're staying when you go on vacation.

We got checked into the Tico Lodge, put on our swimsuits, and headed for the beach. We spent all afternoon in the ocean and on the sand, and it was glorious. Later we went back to the hostel and changed then looked around for somewhere to eat dinner. We took the advice of a local who told us where to go, and it was amazing. Lesson #2: Listen to the locals.

At the restaurant, our server was this tall Costa Rican guy named Judah who had, no joke, the most amazing dreadlocks I've ever seen. They came all the way down his back, but they were contained in a long ponytail, so it didn't look sketchy or anything. I can't really do it justice with my feeble attempts at description, but that guy had seriously the coolest hair in the entire world.

After dinner, we went back to the hostel and went to sleep after talking for a while.  Saturday morning, I woke up early and went down to the beach. I walked around taking pictures and just basking in the glory of being at the ocean. After about an hour, I went back to the room to find Hannah awake, and we went to breakfast. 

Pretty typical vacation so far.

After breakfast we hit the beach again and spent some more time swimming in the ocean and playing in the sand. Hannah discovered the presence of hermit crabs on the beach, so we spent quite some time capturing some with the intention of taking them home...hey, there were no signs that said not to! However, they were a pain to try to contain, and we eventually let them go. Lesson #3: Hermit crabs are incredibly adept at escaping from hollow coconut shells.

We had to check out of the hostel at noon, so we headed back, showered, and packed all our stuff back in our backpacks. After checking out, we went to the national park, which was right by our hostel. And that's when it started to get interesting...

The Manuel Antonio National Park is a beautiful rainforest with hiking trails and white sandy beaches along the coastline. Hannah and I started out on one of the trails, but we wanted to see some wildlife, so we soon ventured off the trail and started walking up a stream. I felt like Indiana Jones or something as we trekked through the rainforest with our backpacks. We came across a little trail and followed that for a while, which led us to several vines, which, of course, we climbed and swung from like monkeys. (Pictures will be on Facebook very soon.) 

We didn't think it was a problem to leave the trail because a) there were no signs or anything indicating otherwise and b) one of the guides who worked in the park saw us leave the trail and didn't say anything. The entire time we were off the trail the first time, nothing bad happened, and the most interesting wildlife we saw was a couple of lizards and some strange tree crab things.

We eventually made it back onto the trail and walked to one of the beaches. Since our swimsuits were wet and gross from swimming that morning, we didn't get back in the water, but we just hung out on the beach for a while. Then we went back into the rainforest. Once again, we started out on the trail, but we saw another little stream off to one side, so we headed off down the stream in search of more adventure and more wildlife. We found both.

I was walking ahead of Hannah, picking my way through the fallen branches and wet stones of the stream. I looked down, and what I saw didn't register at first. But I suddenly stopped short when I realized that the gray thing directly in front of me was not another tree branch. It was, in fact, the tail of a crocodile. If I had taken one more step, I would've stepped on it.

I just stared at it for a few seconds. It was light gray and at least as long as I am tall. It wasn't moving, so I think it was asleep. Hannah was coming up behind me and asked what it was. I slowly turned toward her, wide-eyed. "It's...a...crocodile." 

Saying it out loud seemed to help me register what was going on. I finally started moving away. I had a vague idea that I should take a picture, but rapidly decided that a hasty retreat was the far better option. We quickly and silently headed back up the stream until we were a reasonable distance away. We stopped and looked back, and I saw it move, so it was definitely alive.

We just stood there in shock for a few minutes, registering what had just happened. I had almost stepped on a sleeping crocodile. That would've been really bad. After calming down and recuperating for a few minutes, we decided to head back upstream, away from the crocodile.

I started walking first, and I hadn't even taken 5 steps when I felt something jab the top of my foot. I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you that I was wearing my TOMS and shorts. Lesson #4: TOMS are not a suitable substitute for hiking boots.

When I felt the jab, I thought that a branch had snapped back and hit my foot. I jerked my foot back and looked down. 

It wasn't a branch. It was a snake. 

I saw it all in the same instant: the coiled snake, the triangle-shaped head, the dark and light brown mottled skin, the bite marks on my foot, and the blood. That was the most terrifying instant of my entire life.

"I...just got bit...by a snake." I gasped. Then I started to run. Hannah and I ditched the stream entirely and took off through the rainforest back toward the trail. We were both panicking.

We made it back to the trail, where Hannah made me stop so she could tie my hair band around my ankle. We later discovered that you're not supposed to do that; it's a myth. Lesson #5: The Discovery Channel lies.

Then she made me sit down in the trail while she ran for help. We were both screaming for help at this point. The park was just closing, and a lady was driving by in an SUV. Hannah flagged her down and told her what had happened, and she motioned me to get in the front seat. She drove me at high speed toward the park entrance, which was further away than I had thought.

When we got to the park headquarters at the entrance, they took me inside and had me sit down on a couch while they called an ambulance. They brought a guide who spoke English (usually I would've been ok with Spanish, but I wasn't exactly thinking clearly, so the Spanish wasn't quite working) who started talking to me and calming me down. He told me that they had antivenins for every kind of poisonous snake in the area, so I wasn't going to die. 

After I calmed down, he started asking me what the snake looked like. I tried to describe it, and then they brought me pictures of all the different snakes in the area. From the pictures and my description, we figured out it was a fer-de-lance (terciopelo in Spanish), which is venomous. Goodie. However, my foot still hadn't started swelling up, which they said was a really good sign. 

Hannah caught up with me before the ambulance arrived, which was good...not sure what we would've done if we'd gotten separated. When the ambulance got there, they took us to the hospital in Quepos, about 20 minutes away. No one at the hospital spoke much English, so Hannah translated a lot for me. Thank you, Dr. Thacker, for teaching her medical Spanish! You would've been proud of her.

They did a blood test to see if there was venom in my blood. The first one came out negative, which means that I jerked my foot away before it had time to inject venom. Lesson #6: God is awesome.

However, they wanted to do another test 6 hours after the bite just to make sure. So we had to wait around in the hospital for hours. It was ok at first, but as time went on, my foot started hurting...a lot. It just kept getting worse and worse and worse...it was the most intense pain I've ever felt. The doctors and nurses kept saying they were going to give me something for the pain, but they never did. It was awful. They did the second blood test at 10pm, and then we waited about 4 hours for them to tell us the results. Lesson #7: Never take the US's health care system for granted.

When the doctor finally came in around 2am, he found both of us asleep in the hospital bed. He woke me up to tell me that the second blood test showed no venom, so I could go home. However, he said we could stay in the hospital for the night since we didn't have anywhere to go.

Then this crazy nurse lady came and made me follow her (walking was TERRIBLE) to another room where she gave me a shot for the pain and another shot to prevent infection. Then she wanted us to leave. I explained that we didn't have anywhere to go and that the doctor had said we could stay until morning, and she very reluctantly agreed that we could stay until they needed the bed for another patient.  Jerk.

I went back to bed and slept until the crazy nurse came in and told us that it was 6am and we needed to leave now. After a very confusing payment process, we made our way out of the hospital. There was a bus stop right by the hospital, so we took that bus to Quepos, where we looked for somewhere to eat breakfast. Since it was before 7 on a Sunday morning, everything was closed except for the restaurant in the good ol' Best Western hotel. Yay for US-based businesses understanding that people need to eat in the mornings.

After an excellent breakfast, we walked back to the bus station to buy our tickets to San José. The next bus wasn't until 10, so we had a couple hours to wait. We ended up reading by the ocean...not a bad way to kill 2 hours. At 10, we boarded the bus for the 4-hour ride home.

The moral of the story? When stuck between a crocodile and a poisonous snake, go for the snake.