It rained early in the morning. Listening to pounding rain on a tin roof is made all the more special in the rainforest. Our group got our first daylight view of the resort in the fog of morning. It was exactly as you’d expect a rainforest to look like. The resort staff fed us a great breakfast, including rice and beans of course. I began to really appreciate the quality of the pineapple in Costa Rica. They were juicy and not overly sweet. I also learned the proper way to cut one, for any future fruit salads I might prepare.
During breakfast, Josh and Gideon, a student at Yale who was working at the reserve for the summer, brought out a fer-de-lance snake in a plastic tub. The fer-de-lance is the deadliest snake in Costa Rica. This particular snake had almost bitten the resort manager Wilberth as he walked from the lodge to the staff quarters late the night before. It didn’t break the skin, but hearing about the incident inspired all of us to ask Josh what would happen if someone were to be bitten. He nonchalantly explained that while it might be possible to get an airlift to San Jose, more than likely the unfortunate person would die within an hour. He “comforted” us by telling us that more than half of all snakebites in Costa Rica were drybites without venom, and impulsively injecting a victim with antivenom (not that the resort kept any around) would be just as dangerous as the bite itself. The juvenile snake that had struck at Wilberth was too immature to have learned how to withhold venom yet, though.
After this excitement, Josh led a large group of us on a morning hike through some trails that encircled the hotel. Mere stayed behind to catch up on some sleep. Along the way, he pointed out various flora and fauna (more flora, as most rainforest creatures, including snakes, are nocturnal). The hike culminated in an overlook of an impressive fifty meter high double waterfall. I suppose I had seen bigger ones in Oregon, but this one was especially impressive because I was one of maybe a couple thousand people who had ever seen it. Of course, on the way back to the hotel, Josh had to point out an eyelash pit viper, the second most deadly snake in the country.
Once back at the hotel, I ran up to grab Mere so I could show her the waterfall before her massage appointment. It was very cool at the base of the waterfall, and I could only stand to be in the pool for a few seconds. Also, I don’t have much confidence in myself as a swimmer and the rocks around the boundary of the pool were very slippery.
Lunch was a hearty beef and vegetable stew, which had to be extensively seasoned with Lizano, the local sweet and tangy hot sauce to have any taste at all. Traditional Costa Rican food is actually very bland. Restaurants keep hot sauce around for gringos who might have assumed that everybody south of the Rio Grande eats Mexican food. Gina, a public relations specialist from Oakland, CA, bought multiple bottles to smuggle back into the U. S.
After a short nap, the hotel staff challenged the GAP group to a soccer game on their field. The field was an area on top of a hill about thirty meters long and twenty wide that had been cleared of trees. It was uneven, muddy, and there were exposed rocks in the middle of the field. Additionally, the field was surrounded by some thick brush on three sides. Every time I or someone else reached into the brush to retrieve the ball, I winced with horror that somebody might disturb a snake.
As this was maybe the second time in life I’d played even a casual game of soccer, I stayed on the defensive side for most of the game. Meredith played goalie. The GAP team outnumbered the staff at least two to one, which didn’t necessarily provide us with an advantage. They had an advantage of being Central Americans and therefore born kicking, but we had a lot of talent on our team, too. Jimmy, Dave, Autumn (a Floridian who’d turned 21 one of the first days of the trip, making her the youngest of the group), her boyfriend Kevin (a recent Coast Guard Academy graduate), and Nathaniel (a Canadian biochemistry student) had clearly played before. Anthony admitted that he hadn’t played since he was a kid, but he showed a ton of hustle by exhaustively running back and forth along the length of the field. Melissa hung back with us on defense. Another resort guest not traveling with GAP, Kevin from Amsterdam, joined our team and provided some serious game. Of course, if someone shot the ball from more than a foot in front of the goal, it would inevitably hit a rock and be diverted, so perseverance and luck were just as important as skill.
Everything was going really well until half an hour into the game when Dave twisted his ankle and had to leave the field. His ankle immediately looked really swollen, and he even put a precious, precious beer on it before ice could be fetched. Meanwhile, while Dave pondered whether he’d be able to walk before the trip was over, the staff demanded we continue playing. Now the teams were more balanced by the numbers, and I was forced to venture more than eight feet from the goal. At the end of the game, which happened to coincide with the staff tying it up, Mere got some begrudged props from the macho boys on the staff team for her aggressive goal-tending.
I didn’t want to make a big deal of it in light of Dave’s serious injury, but Gideon had kneed me solidly on the side of the shin during the game. It caused a deep bruise and I limped for a little while, and it hurt for more than a week afterward.
Before dinner, we undertook a major scrubbing to clean the rainforest mud off of us. We headed down to the lodge a bit early, and Shiralee (a primary school teacher from London) taught us British blackjack, which is like a mix of UNO and rummy. Dave was brought his dinner in Anthony and Melissa’s room (his room was upstairs). This immediately attracted animals, and Josh was summoned to recover a rat from their room. Mere and I stayed down at the lodge for a couple of hours playing games. Frank, a Nazarene minister from Ottawa whom with his wife Cindy Mere and I would become most endeared to on the trip, taught us a game called “Diminishing Whist”. This would become the official card game for the rest of the trip.
I didn’t sleep much that night. I came down with a cold that day, and had entered the constant nasal drainage phase. Also, I thought a lot about snakes.
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