Aerial Trams and Bullet Ants and Vipers, Oh My!

Ciao! Okay, so from the title of this post, you can probably tell I love theatre. So, yes my title may be cheesy, but I like it (Oh yeah, this is Rachel by the way). So, the Aerial Tram. Today we drove for about one hour from our over-priced, over-fancy hotel to a Costa Rican National Park. It was a beautiful park. We boarded a little platform with benches and sat down. Now, the little platform was covered with a water proof roof and attached to a large cable. As soon as we were seated, the guide boarded and the cable began moving us up. We went through the forest slowly. It was kind of like zip lining, but a slow, non-dangling form. I have to say, the sights from the car were amazing, but I prefer whizzing through the air at high speeds on a thin cable. After the ride, which was about one hour long, we had a complimentary Costa Rican meal. They served us chicken in tomato sauce, rice, beans, fruits, salad, and fried plantains. I loved the chicken, rice, and pineapple. Everybody loved the fried plantains, except for me. I did not like them at all.

After lunch, we had three choices before driving back, 1) go on a walk through the forest, 2) go to the butterfly and frog gardens, or 3) go to the Serpenterium (snakes exhibit). I, of course, chose the snakes. I’m deathly afraid of them, I thought it would be cool to see the things I was scared of. On the way, we saw a viper just sitting in a tree digesting its meal. But even freakier than the viper, were the bullet ants. On our walk to the snakes, our guide stopped us to show us some freakily large ants. They were about one inch long, and extremely fat. He told us that these ants were called bullet ants because if you were bit by one, it felt like being shot by a bullet. They terrify me more than snakes. I was plagued by seeing them all through the snake tour. We saw snakes of all kinds. The poisonous ones were the best. My favorite was the extremely common, extremely deadly, Costa Rican Fer De Lance. If this snake bites you, you’ll die within 2 hours, unless you receive immediate medical care. On the snake tour were my dad, brother, and grandma. My mom went on the forest hike. She’ll blog about that soon. Ciao! (Oh, by the way. I know Ciao is Italian, but a Costa Rican said Ciao for goodbye, so that’s why it’s Ciao.)