Beetle

Every once in a while things happen that remind me that I'm in the tropics and that, even though I live in a town with paved roads and electricity and spend plenty of time on my laptop or watching TV, I still live down the road from tropical rain forest. Like when yesterday my host brother and his friend walked into my room saying, "Ken, check this out." At first I just saw a board, but as they got closer to me I noticed a HUGE beetle on the board. This thing was bigger than a computer mouse. Its protective shell looked like it was made of wood. I only got one good picture of it, as beetles tend to crawl all over. I overcame my (super rational) fear and did touch and hold it. 

(this beetle has hairs you can see, and well, could probably comb)

This second picture is of it on the banana tree that's growing in the backyard. It doesn't look big, but that's because it's on the leaves of the banana plant are huge. One thing of note, César's friend found this beetle in his house. Granted, he lives closer to the forest than we do, and has lots of trees/plants on his property, and the house is more open to the world than ours, but, still.