We stood at 430m, looking up into a steep hillside with dense vegetation and seemingly endless darkness just beyond the tree line. Welding a machete, Lalo took up the hill, our guide telling us that he wanted to explore this area, that maybe there would be better habitat and the chance to find our bushmaster. My feet weren’t looking forward to this hike – the undergrowth restricted us in our direction, ducking and sometimes nearly crawling through the leaf litter to avoid thick vines and low branches. In any environment in North America, I wouldn’t have thought twice about what I was doing. This being my first time in Central America, it was constantly running through my mind that anywhere I put my hand could potentially be a resting place for one of the common venomous species, the eyelash viper, Bothriechis schlegelii.
Eyelash vipers are a polymorphic species, ranging from a brilliant solid yellow, reddish green, to a mottled brown. They easily disappear in their surroundings, often residing 1-2 meters above the ground waiting to ambush lizards and frogs. The majority of human encounters with this species seems to be from trudging through the rainforests. Although the venom from these vipers isn’t known to be life threatening, bites to the hands, arms and even the face have been reported resulting in necrosis of the tissue around the bite location.
I think I would have had a difficult time weaving through this labyrinth of trees and vines without any gear, but I was cursing my choice to bring a small camera store with me. My pack created a very high center of gravity on these hillsides, and trying to limbo under branches just made things worse. I was slipping, sliding, damn near falling down in an area I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. Our guides and the rest of our group kept trudging on, I was doing all I could to keep up with them. Between the trail coming up and this horrific hillside, I’d probably rolled my ankles a dozen times by now. Still, the only thing racing through my mind was that the next limb I grabbed while slipping or my fumbling through the forest was going to lead to a bad introduction between me and an eyelash viper in the trees or a fer-de-lance on the ground.
just as we were trying to navigate our way around a steep hillside, our guide was flipping small debris on the ground and he paused and took a step back. He’d caught a glimpse of something under a leaf, took a step back and flipped it again. Lying there in a wonderful example of camouflage was a juvenile hognosed viper, Porthidium nasatum. These small vipers are somewhat common in Central America and are one of the contributors to envenomations. This find as a very cool encounter and pretty much worth all the agony I had just put myself through. We kept on searching after a few moments of relishing our late night find, but nothing else turned up.
I was thoroughly relieved when we decided to make our way back down to the trail we’d ascended on. Although some of the group and our guides were still searching out snakes and frogs along the trail, I was very eager to get back to the SUV. I worked my way down the trail, waiting for the others to catch up. Fortunately, the finds that I missed out on were more common species, but I still regret not taking more time that evening to contribute to the searching and photographing. We all began to move down the trail, only pausing to search the large rocks along the path.
By the time we made it back to the car, I nearly collapsed. My ankles has swollen so much I had to loosen my boots before getting into the car. I think we all were spent, obviously me more than others. After shedding my pack and each of us throwing back about a gallon of water, we all began to crack smiles and laugh about our hike. We hadn’t found what we’d hoped for, but the experience was a great one and was one of the best parts of the trip.
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