Costa Rica Boat Tours – The Circle of Life

It only took three billion years of evolution on planet earth, but the ultimate circle of life has finally been achieved… and destroyed all in one day.

On May 9th, 2007, Billy and I rode in the back of a truck with some tour guides to get to the Palo Verde Boat Tours near Bolson and Santa Cruz, Guanacaste.

While waiting for other tourists to come, Billy dropped a shrimping net, and managed to catch a shrimp. It was a small critter, but would server our purpose in an effort to become self-proclaimed Gods, if only for a day. Using this shrimp, we hatched a plan that would spark controversy for years to come, and would ultimately ban us from the state of Kansas. We would use the shrimp to catch a fish (pictured to the right).

The wheels of divine purity already in motion, we then embarked on the tour. We saw several Cebus monkeys, inluding one crazy one that actually came onto the boat looking for food! There were also many birds, a bunch of iguanas, Howler monkeys, and of course, crocodiles… many crocodiles.

In order to fulfill our destiny of food-chain disruption, we headed downstream to the area where many crocs hang out, and spotted a nice-sized crocodile near land. We tossed the fish there, and after a minute of watching it flop around, the crocodile jumped to the task and slowly began eating it. The croc played with the poor fish for a while, and then positioned the fish properly and chomped down for the final crunchy bite. The women on the boat shrieked in resounding terror, imagining what this beast would do to their nimble arms. But the men knew better. We knew that it was time. Time to complete the circle of life.

Billy and I rolled up our sleeves. The plan was set: We would jump into the water, sneak up on the crocodile, and destroy the inferior creature with our bare hands. After which, we would eat it, and use the scrap meat to catch more shrimp. This feat would not only put us on top of the food chain, it would establish us as the eternal governors. It almost seemed too easy.

There was just one problem: Billy got cold feet. As we argued about the impending crocodile attack in order to usurp Mother Nature’s position and become self-proclaimed messiahs, Billy’s true colors came out. Billy had been there before, and he didn’t want to go back. As it turns out, Billy is Satan. The horns in the picture here are clear proof of this, as is his angry face and red clothing.

No longer wanting to tangle with God and Satan all in the same day, I decided to let the croc be, giving him domination over the global food chain, at least for the day. And after meeting Satan himself, I decided that rather than take over the world, we’d do the next best thing: eat tons of delicious food at Chico Cocodrillo and then get violently black-out drunk in Montezuma – story coming soon in two blog articles.