Costa Rica is home to 137 species of snake, but before most of you get nervous, the good news is that only 20 of them are deadly poisonous. For those of you that are still nervous, the Fer de Lance is a meter long and drab brown while being staggeringly deadly and of course constrictor snakes don't need venom because they're designed to choke the life out of you.
Nearly every walk would start with Mario reminding us
"Don't walk ahead of me, don't go off the path, look wherever you put your feet, and try not to touch anything" and then we'd hike in the bush for 3-6 hours. To illustrate the point, the photo below is a typical patch of path side rain forest which (may or may not but quite likely does) contain several dozen snakes.
After all those warnings, we only saw 2 wild snakes in our entire visit and when you see the photo of this one, you may wonder how we ever missed it, but its only as thick as your finger and a foot or so long. And horrifically poisonous. This eyelash pitviper was a few dozen feet up the side of a tree at Cahuita and is one of the most dangerous snakes in Costa Rica.
By comparison, this Cloudy Snaileater is a non-venomous snake, which is just as well since we encountered it at night when one of our group nearly walked into it hanging at face height. It was similarly a little over a foot long and as thick as your finger, so finding these buggers is more than a bit difficult.
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