Before the incident in the Nicaragua countryside.

Driving down the road one day in northern Nicaragua towards Esteli with my motorcycle, slightly dazed and road-weary, I noticed a large black hose in the road. As I approached, I realized it was an enormous snake. I swerved to avoid the snake but didn’t want to swerve too recklessly so I was on track to run over the tail. The snake, it turns out, was not keen on having its tail squashed. The snake turned around and posed in its most impressive defensive posture, raising its head about about 1.5 ft (0.5 m) off the ground, looking preparing to strike to protect its tail. At this point I was not keen on having my leg bitten by a snake so I raised my feet as high as I could so the snake wouldn’t bite me and I whizzed by at about 35 mph (60 kph). I don’t think I ran it over and I don’t know if it tried to strike. It was about 8-9 ft (close to 3m) long, thin, mostly black but some reddish purple coloring at the tips and an iridescent glimmer. It was in the fairly moderate climate grassland area. I consulted with a snake expert to identify the snake and he thought it was in the Indigo Snake family. After looking at the pictures and description, I am pretty sure that’s what it was. The picture here represents the snake about right but the one I came across was thinner, blacker and very long.

Indigo Snake

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