However we hadn't been in our hostel 5 minutes when we saw this. I have never seen Stacey scamper so fast - apart from when she realised there was only 3 minutes of happy hour left and she fancied a cheeky second mojito.
It's called an elephant beetle. It bites. It has a horn on its head and most horrifyingly, it flies. I think only a shark with a laser attached to its head and a razor blade attached to its fin would be more fearsome. (They would be call ed Razor Laser Sharks and they would kick Jaws' ass).
The guy who picked the beetle off the tree for us (we weren't stupid enough to touch it) prodded it and you could actually hear it snort with annoyance. You should NEVER be able to hear an insect breathe.
Off the top of my head, Elephant Beetles, Megasoma elephas, are part of the Scarabaeidae family and the subfamily Dynastinae. They are classified with the Neotropical rhinoceros beetles.
We saw crocodiles, caymans (or is that caymen?) lizards and all sorts of birds today as we got the water taxi (after four buses) to Tortuguero, which is not accessible by road. We'll put more pictures up at some point. It has been a great day. Tortuguero is very ramshackle, with no roads and no cars. At least we won't get middle aged taxi drivers whistling at us here.
What we are getting though, is lots of guides in vests offering us varying combinations of tours for varying prices. One just knocked on our door. Talk about the hard sell.