It's been a more than usually exciting week on the foreshortened mortality front. We are currently in Medellin, having got here after spending a few days in
el valle, near Cali. We travelled north and decided to break the journey by stopping at the Santa Rosa de Cabal thermal spring complex. We lounged in volcanically heated water (up to a temperature of about 40 degrees, according to the book), and then dried off and walked back to the car. As the complex did not, as advertised, have any towels to rent, we had had to take turns with the one towel that my mother had brought all the way from Belfast to Santa Rosa de Cabal. This meant that the girls, the first to dry off, were already back at the car waiting for us as the boys, Oisin and I, grudged through the twilight to join them and head off to find a hotel. As we got to the car, Pati turned and yelled "HIJUEPUTA, una serpiente!" This roughly translates as "FUCK ME, a snake!" I froze for a second, and then turned to see a one metre long snake sliding past where the boy and I had just walked a moment ago. The lad minding the car park went "jesus" in a fairly un-reassuring way, and we all fumbled like mad to get into the car and lock the doors (not the car park lad, we abandoned him to his own fate, which seemed to involve directing the unsuspecting newly arrived 4x4 to drive over the snake. This was unsuccessful and only seemed to guarantee that he would have to share the car park with a really,
really, irate snake.) As we stared at each other in disbelief, Pati told us that the car park lad had shouted that it was a "
rabo de aji" (chilli tail) - "Coral Snake" in English. I did recall seeing black bands on it, which tallies with the description. A description that includes, according to the Wiki entry, the observation that "New World coral snakes possess one of the most potent venoms of any North American snake". Presumably the South American ones will be harmless, then, eh?
