If you don’t like snakes, you have to do your best to get over that fear in Costa Rica. The same goes for spiders in this area of the world because there are many of them. I have been taking pictures of all of the insects and arachnids that we come across so that we can search on the Internet in order to figure out what we have actually seen. The unofficial roles and responsibilities in our family: the kids find the creatures, I “ooh and aah” and snap some photos, and Mélanie steers clear when they are extra big.
The kids discovered an especially large spider last weekend:
It is a golden orb-weaver and it is very impressive when you see it up close. I explained to Gabriel that the tensile strength of its web is much stronger than steel – hence the reason why Spiderman’s web is so strong (there is no better way to make these things click than when I use a superhero reference).
Speaking of Spiderman… Gabriel prepared a little daypack by himself before we headed out this morning for a daytrip. Neither myself nor Mélanie checked before we left to see what he had packed (I figured it might just be some toys). When we came home and opened it after the kids had gone to sleep, we discovered that he had packed some Spiderman costumes (I guess in case he ran into trouble out on the Costa Rican streets and needed to quickly change into his alter ego).
