German ‘Alligators’

Reading Time: 11 minutes

*names, numbers, and locations have been changed to protect the privacy of fascinating people.

One time, I pitched my writing in exchange for lodging, like some kind of influencer freak, and I almost wound up on an episode of When Animals Attack. 

—

One mundane day in my pandemic bubble in Costa Rica in 2020—as the world outside burned down around me—I was scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, looking for life in all the wrong places. I ‘remembered’ that I would not find it in my feed. I needed a change of scenery, so I left my feed to check my inbox. Maybe I had left behind some crumbs of unconsumed human connection there. 

Today’s unsolicited request was from a Costa Rican hotel. It was a flier for a promotion: $50 per person, per night, all meals included with a guided forest hike and use of canoes. A steal. 

It made sense. Costa Rica’s main source of income is tourism. Like individuals in multiple other industries, the pandemic and its flight restrictions had left those dependent on tourism scrambling. The Costa Rican Tourism Board sang its sweet song of suffering to the government… and it worked. The overlords took mercy on them and allowed tourism destinations to open their doors to national tourism, under strict conditions. Suddenly all the tourism hot spots and not-so-hot spots shifted their marketing focus inside their own borders. Those of us in-country were the new targets. That’s why I received a random, homemade Photoshop flier for a stay at an eco-lodge.

It was a great deal, but I was broke, too. I hadn’t been immune to COVID’s curse. My business had recently gone bust. I had lost everything. 

The funny thing about losing my business was that the tragedy was liberating. When I had nothing else to lose, I was free to pursue my dreams. My fear of failure was cured. When you hit the ground, you have nowhere left to fall. Reaching the ranks of ‘indebted disaster’ freed me to say, “It’s time to pursue a career in writing.” 

I might as well get that out of my system since I was already in the muck, right?

And hilariously enough, it worked.

After a few online courses in marketing, copywriting, and freelancing, I was contract-writing my way out of the hole. And that is where this ad for a cheap stay in an eco-lodge found me in my life. 

—

Have you ever done anything so out of character you surprise yourself? 

Don’t ask me what kind of wild arrogance inspired me to do it, but I thought, “Why not meet an unsolicited offer with an unsolicited offer?”

Without knowing anything about this place, I responded, “I’m a copywriter. For a 2×1 discount for my husband and me for two nights, I’ll write promotional material that you can use on your website and social media. I can send over a proposal and you pick your package.”

I don’t know what influencer incantation invoked this discount demon in me. Maybe it was an obnoxious thing to do but hey, they didn’t have to accept it. I wasn’t one of those douchebags offering the hotel “exposure” (…for the simple reason that I don’t have enough followers to get away with it). 

I didn’t have any money, so I was offering work.  

I never expected an answer, but within an hour the owner wrote back, “Hi, Caitlan. Thanks. I accept your offer”. 

—

We drove in a direction that is seldom hyped in Costa Rican tourism, the rural farmlands of the low-lying northeast. It took two and half hours to cover the mere 75 miles to our destination because, for the last 15 miles, we crawled along washed-out gravel roads littered with large loose rocks on steep inclines. Occasionally we passed little wooden houses “protected” by sleepy mixed-breed dogs that slowly rose from their naps in the middle of the road to let you bounce by. 

We wound slowly around land that had been eroded into valleys from clearing trees to farm cattle. When you reached the top of a hill, you could see miles of the Dole and Del Monte empire on the horizon: treeless pineapple plantations baking under the sun.

The enchantment of tropical forests—anteaters, poison dart frogs, jaguars, scarlet macaws—had been replaced by barbwire fences, cow dung, and rusted machinery.

But as we approached our destination, we left the dry, spoiled farmland behind and the area turned into the lush forests for which Costa Rica is known. We would discover our eco lodge’s owner, Rainer, was responsible. He had come to Costa Rica as a young European stud in the late 70s with money to burn on conservation. He bought 300 hectares to protect the primary forests that were left and reforest the rest. 

Rainer’s property provides a haven for monkeys, caimans, frogs, snakes, agoutis, tapirs, coatis, ocelots, otters, turtles, and countless species of arachnids, insects, and birds such as toucans, orioles, parrots, tanagers, tiger herons, and king vultures—to give you the short version of the list. 

Rainer also opens his lodge’s doors to universities conducting biodiversity and conservation research.

Our world is filled with so many fascinating heroes disguised as normal people. 

You can say that, right? You can praise this man for employing the locals and providing protected land to safeguard Costa Rica’s biodiversity.

But I suppose you can also say, “Who is this privileged foreigner with his foreign currency, buying up the affordable farmland, ergo taking land and jobs from locals?” 

Europeans got their chance to rape their land for profit. Shouldn’t they give the rest of the world a shot at it?

But maybe both things can be true. Maybe a foreigner buying land to protect wildlife can be both a good and a bad thing, depending on your perspective.

Things are rarely simple. 

Besides, if Rainer hadn’t done it, the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita, would have.

—

After 32,875 hours of bouncing along hilly gravel roads, and only 10 miles shy of the Nicaragua border, we rounded a corner to find our destination. The lodge that had wandered into my Instagram inbox was tucked away on a hilltop, hidden behind trees and surrounded by marshy lagoons. The greenish-brown, stagnant swamp water that surrounded the hotel wrapped around the property like a moat. The owners only needed to make the driveway a drawbridge to complete the vibe. I made a note to drop that into their Booking.com review as a friendly suggestion. 

The lodge was not a place to luxuriate. It was the kind of place that rents rubber boots and walking sticks. It was a place one visits to experience isolation, silence, wildlife, and night’s true darkness. A place where you don’t have to leave the grounds and hit the trails to see God’s creatures because they’ll stroll right past the porch where you’re trying to relax in a hammock while the mosquitos eat you alive.

But there is no reason for me to turn this into a travel blog/hotel review with cute little observations about the rustic installations, eco-friendly amenities, outdoor activities, thoughtful staff, and typical food prepared with fresh, local ingredients (*chef’s kiss). You’ll hear none of that, here.

I would much rather talk about my reckless forays into crocodilian territory. 

On our first night at dinner, we were approached in the restaurant by a short, pot-bellied man in his 60s, skin leathered by the sun. He was wearing a baseball cap, a striped polo, a machete on his belt, and rubber boots tucked into his jeans. Victor was the night-shift caretaker and had been for over 20 years. A Costa Rican, his native language was Spanish and his second language was German. Apparently, most of the tourists that visit these wet, wooded boondocks are German. We swapped pleasantries and a few stories, and when the conversation lulled into an awkward silence, I expected him to finally say, 

“Nice to meet you folks. Thanks for visiting. Let me know if I can help you with anything. I’ll let you get back to your dinner”. 

You know, the comfortable clichés that experience has trained you to expect. Instead, Victor stood over our table, looking at us…thinking, while we fidgeted uncomfortably. When he finally spoke again, he said, 

“Would you like to see me feed the alligators?”

My husband and I looked back at him with stunned stares. He might as well have asked, 

“Would you like to see my bare ass?” 

And I would have been less confused. At least I would have known how to respond to that.

Only questions raced through my mind. Did I hear him correctly? Is he joking? How? When? Is this going to be one of those cheap Louisiana roadside attractions like in Joe Dirt? 

Hotels often pitch tours, so I concluded this must have been some kind of off-site excursion. Since he was standing over us, I didn’t have a chance to speak unfiltered to my husband, Jonathan, about it. Jonathan was looking at me for a response. Basing my decision off the line, “Would you like to see me feed the alligators?”, I shrugged ok, willing to roll the dice. 

“Sounds fun. When should we meet you for the tour?” I asked, already sad I wouldn’t be sleeping in the next morning. 

“In 10 minutes,” he answered. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

It was 9pm. 

Now?! My mouth hung open in confusion as he walked away. I wasn’t dressed for an adventure. I didn’t have my wallet on me to pay for a tour. There was no van parked outside ready to take us to a boat or an alligator farm. 

If someone invited me to swim with dolphins. I would kind of know what to expect. I’ve seen it in the movies. We would probably be in a large saltwater pool, with life jackets on, accompanied by an over-zealous guide, and left with a guilty feeling of animal cruelty. But I had no frame of reference for watching Victor feed alligators…except for the cheap Louisiana roadside attraction in Joe Dirt.

He came back shortly with a flashlight and a bag of raw chicken cut into cubes.

“Let’s go,” he said. 

No less confused, we followed him out of the restaurant, on foot, following the driveway toward the swampy moat that separates the lodge from the gravel road we drove in on. 

We had not been walking for a full minute when we heard movement in the grass. There was a low guttural rumble that sounded like a growl. Victor heard it, too. He turned around and shone his flashlight right beside me and said,

“There’s one, now.” 

And there, 4 feet from me in the halo of a weak flashlight was one of Victor’s alligators. I screamed from the depths of my soul. It was an involuntary scream that came out before I ever even told it to do so. It was a sincere scream from my survival-driven lizard brain.

I had not only heard the horror stories, I had caught them in the news:  

More surfers attacked by saltwater crocs at popular tourist destination

And my favorite,

Nicaraguan man’s head found on beach after drunk dip in croc-filled river

But Victor’s “alligators” were not crocs. They weren’t even alligators. They were spectacled caimans. Spectacled caimans usually grow 4-6 feet and can get as large as 8 feet. And while yes, Caimans have been known to attack humans, spectacled caimans are not as aggressive as black caimans which are found in the Amazon, or the American crocodiles that ate everything but that drunk guy’s head in 2014. But I wasn’t exactly in a position to Google. And therefore, my lizard brain was lumping all big mouths near me with sharp, pointy teeth into one family, genus, and species: danger.   

Victor said, “That’s Ingrid.” 

Ingrid was as unphased by my ear-piercing panic as Victor. 

Ingrid must know a small round man walks around at night with raw chicken cubes, so now she comes up near the restaurant to wait. We weren’t even 30 feet from the dining room. 

If you read the article above about attacks on surfers, you know the increase in crocodile attacks in Costa Rica is a result of tour guides and tourists feeding the animals.

Victor then turned around with his flashlight, full steam ahead, plunging me back into the dark with the beast. I ran to keep up and scrambled for my phone in my pocket to turn on the flashlight to keep an eye on the rear. 

The walk down to the green lagoon was exciting (because what the hell just happened?) and horrifying (because I had no idea if another one of those things would slither up on its ancient, scaly belly from out of the darkness. And if it did, where it would come from). I was shining my pathetic phone light behind me and on all sides of me in a frantic paranoia. Where was Ingrid? 

I kept thinking how inappropriate my clothes were for a daring safari in which I would stare a cold-blooded predator in the eyes. I was wearing yoga pants and mesh sneakers. 

We were now standing at the base of the driveway, surrounded on two sides by swamp water. Running back to the hotel would mean crossing paths with Ingrid. But let’s be honest, who wanted to escape? Not me. By now, I was hooked. I had to see where this was going. What is it about stupid and dangerous, and stupidly dangerous decisions that are too exciting to pass on? 

I’m not sure. But I’ve been known to partake—hitchhiking, couchsurfing, and scuba diving in the Mediterranean sans certification when all the instructions were in French…and I didn’t speak any French. I don’t indulge in risky behavior regularly, of course, but when it comes to unusual travel opportunities, I tend to lean in. 

Victor was calling to his carnivorous friends in German, addressing his favorites with the German name he had given them.

I don’t speak German so I can only assume he was saying, “The sacrifices I promised have arrived!”   

He hadn’t been calling long when caimans began to arrive from both lagoons. They were materializing out of the darkness, surfacing from the water and sliding on their reptilian bellies to a very calm Victor, who was tossing chunks of chicken their way. He was as casual as an old man feeding birds in the park. 

The only thing between us and a horde of wild caimans was a short distance. No railing. No fence. Just space. Victor assured us he was swift with his walking stick. Did that mean that he sometimes needed to use it? 

And because the spectacle was not bone chilling enough, he began to call more in from the far reaches of the lagoon. He shone his flashlight on the water and we saw dozens of pairs of eyes reflected back at us. And the army of sinister, glowing eyes was gliding closer. Multiple caimans began to surface and crawl up the bank to open their prehistoric mouths and request a little chicken tendy. It was mesmerizing. I watched in horrified awe, wishing I had eyes in the back of my head and a basic understanding of German.   

At one point, Don Henry invited us to stand behind his favorite blood-thirsty companion so that we may touch her tail and snap a photo.

As an obedient thrill-seeking dummy, I was all over it. 

Have you ever seen a rescue show like ‘Rescue 911’ or ‘I Shouldn’t Be Alive’, and you do not pity the people hanging on for dear life in the episode because these idiots have knowingly walked into a high-risk situation? 

That was us. 

We deserved to lose a limb and be featured on the local news as the jackass tourists that thought it was a good idea to trust a man they just met and touch a caiman’s tail in the dead of night, hours away from a hospital. I was already preparing for my interview with the Discovery Channel, 

“If I hadn’t listened to that funny little man, I would still have my left leg and my husband.” 

And then all the viewers would turn off their TVs and mutter, “Serves you right fuck wad. What did you expect?”

Eventually, Victor ran out of chicken and it didn’t end in a bloodbath. He threw the last chunks into the lagoon and the caimans hurried back into the water to fight over the last bits. Good dogs! We made our way, paranoically, back to the hotel. 

—

Spaces that have not been beaten down by regulation and the fear of a looming lawsuit are now rare. I know there are good reasons for that. But despite my common sense, I am comforted in knowing places that let you dabble in risk still exist. I am comforted in knowing that modern life is not just a sterilized walk through a zoo. 

Unfortunately, somebody someday is going to get hurt. But until that happens, everyone is going to have a whole lot of fun. 

Will it be worth it? Absolutely not.  

—

The next evening at dinner, we watched Victor approach another table of unsuspecting tourists and invite them to watch him feed the alligators. They all looked at the weirdo suspiciously. 

“You really must do it,” we told them. And shortly after, we heard their screams.