Galapagos Islands

It's a jungle out there, as the saying goes, and as far as Costa Rica is concerned, it really is. National parks, wildlife reserves and conservation areas protect 26% of the land, making it one of the primary nature-tourism centers in the world.

There are undeveloped beaches, riverside forests and tangled mangrove swamps to explore. We have tropical dry forests, rain forests and cloud forests, all of which are literally teaming with wild animals. Many of these exotic places are completely foreign and delightful to many of us.

But are they dangerous?

Discovery Channel and Animal Planet are full of men in suspiciously tight shorts who wrestle tropical wildlife proclaiming that "One false move on my part and it's off to hospital I go…Crikey!"

After that, those rearing snakes and lunging tarantulas look particularly fierce and exceptionally scary. But so would you if a big Australian pulled you out of your house and started rolling around on top of you.

Crikey indeed…

In reality, most wild animals, even the scary ones, are in fact more afraid of us then we are of them. They have every reason to be. We step on them, sit on them, run them over in our cars and spray them with chemicals.

Here is my personal guide on how to enjoy "dangerous" animals up close without upsetting them to the point where they are obliged to defend themselves or their young.

Spiders

There is no escaping the fact that spiders are plain creepy, but although Costa Rica is seething with them, you are exceptionally unlikely to get bitten.

Even if you so find yourself on the receiving end of a fang or two don't sweat it; chances are the bite won't be dangerous. There really is no such thing as a deadly tarantula.

The big ones tend to spend their agoraphobic lives in burrows, occasionally emerging for a stroll after heavy rain flushes them out, or when in search of spidery love. Once dawn arrives they will seek a safe, dark place. A pair of shoes left outside will suffice. Shaking them out every morning can reveal some surprising occupants and lessen the risks of a fang in the toe.

Scorpions

Ancient Egyptians were forever assassinating their enemies with scorpions, but the Costa Rican species cannot be used in this manner - they have very weak venom. Like spiders, scorpions have a tendency to crawl into dark spaces. Hotel rooms, beds, and piles of clothing are where we generally make first contact.

A sudden sharp sting from somewhere in your pants can often be attributed to a small scorpion. They crawl in during the night and can react grumpily when they discover a human in their bed. Removing your pants in public is really the worst thing that can happen. If you do get stung, you may feel a bit of local numbness and a strange metallic taste in your mouth, but the symptoms subside within an hour or so.

Vampire bats

Dracula exists. I'm not joking. Vampire bats are real enough, although they don't turn into caped villains. Every night, they fly from their caves in search of unsuspecting animals. Painlessly they puncture a vein on their sleeping victim, introducing an anticoagulant so that the blood flows freely. It is possible to contract rabies from a bite, and so you should not sleep outdoors unprotected (garlic and crucifixes won't work). Vampires are fairly rare (partly because they are persecuted and killed by humans) and do not commonly bite humans.

Charles Darwin first recorded and made scientific use of these observations, however he was NOT the first to observe them. Indeed his journal record that the governor on one Island boasted that he could tell which Island a tortoise cam from simply by the shape of its shell.

Therefore people before Darwin noticed and observed these things but it took Darwin to work out what they meant (told us).