It was Easter Holy Week and I headed over to the small village of Ortega about 325 kilometers (203 miles) north of the Costa Rican capital, San Jose.
My expectation for the trip was to cover the festivities of Good Friday from an entirely different angle from the way the rest of the world celebrates it.
This town has a Good Friday tradition: go hunt down a crocodile. A group of 30 men go in the river La Palma, pounding through the water in search of a crocodile. Meanwhile, a kilometer ahead, another group waits with nets to trap the big critter.
As this unfolds, hundreds of people from all over the country stand along the banks of the river to watch the hunt.
Six hours of burning sun and stifling heat of up to 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) later, the hunters still hadn’t managed to close in on the croc. With each advance, the creature managed to escape, until finally one of the hunters shouted, “I found it in a cave, on the other side of the river!”
