Background:
My girlfriend, Katie, and I recently spent about 10 days in Costa Rica visiting our friend Ryan, who has been working at Luna Lodge. Luna is a resort in the beautiful and remote Osa peninsula. While there, we decided to hike into Corcavado National forest, supposedly described by National Geographic as "the most biologically intense place in the universe."
The rest of the story comes from an excerpt of a e-mail I sent out describing my trip:
To tell this story properly, let's back up a moment to Wednesday night. We are discussing the upcoming hike with Lana, Luna's owner, who served as a guide in the park for years before she created Luna. Ryan has led a few short day-trips into the park before, but our three-day foray will be far longer than anything he has previously done. Because of this, Lana wants us to talk to one of the Tico (costa Rican) guides to make sure we're prepared. Katie wonders whether there are any animals that we should be nervous about. Oscar, a guide, says that one should always be careful to watch for snakes, but the larger animals will pretty much leave you alone. That is, except for the peccaries. Two species of these wild pigs live in Corcavado, Oscar says, and one is especially pugnacious. It has developed a defense mechanism of swarming anything that might be a predator and goring it to death with their long tusks. So what should we do if we see any? Run? No, says, Oscar, try to pull yourself into a tree. That's the only safe way to escape.
This warning is somewhat unnerving, and throughout the hike down to the park, Katie theorizes about the possible fates that we might meet at the tusks of a pack of peccaries. Ryan and I attempt to convince her of the unlikeliness of this scenario. Peccaries are, after all, pretty rare. Less than a mile into the park, however (you saw this coming a long time back, didn't you?), we hear rustiling in the dark underbrush to our left. Peering though the trees, we soon determine that the source of the noise is, of course, a pack of peccaries. For the moment, they are rooting around in the ground. Thinking quickly, I did what any dumb tourist would do in such a situation: took a picture. The peccaries, however, did not take kindly to having their images forever immortalized on my computer. They stopped foraging, and some began to stalk closer to us, sizing us up.
Though Ryan thought that they were probably the more-docile of the two kinds of peccary, he was unsure of what to do. He coolly attempted to convey this to us in the most reassuring choice of words possible. "Guys," he said, "I have no idea what to do right now."
It was now clear that there were a lot of peccaries in the bushes, well over a dozen. Being on a trail in the thick rain forest, we had only two avenues of escape: down the trail or up the trail. I suggested that unsheathing the machete might be an appropriate course of action. While Ryan did that, I armed myself with a full Nalgene bottle from Katie's bag. It should be noted, by that way, that there was a distinct scarcity of climbable trees on that particular stretch of path. The peccaries continued to work their way closer, and Ryan whacked his machete on the ground in an attempt to scare them off. This didn't work. The peccaries startled, and immediately began pressing closer. Worse yet, one of the larger pigs had manuvered to outflank us, and was now walking down the path towards us.
I decided to upgrade my weapon from Nalgene to large, rotting stick. With Katie in between us, we continue slowly down the path. We can hear that there are peccaries moving up ahead of us, and decide that we must press on so that we do not find ourselves completely surrounded. We move on and on, and finally find that the peccaries, while still following us, are all behind us. The big pig on the path is studying us from about fifteen feet away. I whack my stick against a tree, and he startles again. We begin walking faster, and soon can hear no more movement behind us. Safe at last.
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