Ten years ago, American scientist Alex Bentley journeyed to the Ecuadorian town of Mera to research the elusive “X” snake species. During his expedition, a local park ranger informed him of an elderly resident who maintained an extraordinary collection of reptiles.
Bentley located the collection in a modest shack on the man’s property, marked by a simple sign charging one dollar for adults and fifty cents for children. Surrounded by vibrant anthurium flowers and tropical greenery, he entered a small, dusty structure characterized by white lattice walls and a corrugated metal roof.
The interior revealed wooden shelves lined with dozens of preserved snake specimens, coiled within glass jars and plastic bottles. These rare and obscure creatures were submerged in cane liquor that had grown cloudy over several decades.
Bentley described the collection as a “hidden treasure” that had escaped notice for years. The assortment, spanning 70 years of gathering, contained massive serpents and unidentified species that even a trained scientist could not immediately categorize.
Beyond the specimens, Bentley was fascinated by the collector himself: Manuel Genaro Peñafiel. A slight, mustachioed farmer residing in the adjacent white house, Peñafiel had repurposed the small shack into a makeshift museum.
At 90 years old, Peñafiel had spent his life capturing snakes on his rural estate, often risking life-threatening bites in the process. His collection featured a vast diversity, ranging from slender whip snakes to the lethal equis—the pit viper whose distinctive hourglass markings inspired the name “X.”
Bentley found it curious that Peñafiel chose to preserve these animals in a region where the standard reaction to encountering a snake is to strike it with a machete.
While Bentley found it difficult to explain his own fascination with these misunderstood animals, he recognized a kindred spirit in the untrained farmer. An immediate bond formed between them, rooted in what Bentley described as a shared “calling” toward the snakes.