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Forty-five balls have been lying in the burning sun of the white-hot Diquis plain since time immemorial. Have they something to say that we were or are incapable of understanding? In order to satisfy my curiosity to see and photograph the balls near Piedras Blancas south-east of the River Goto, also in Costa Rica, we had to spend a whole day in a Land Rover to cover a distance of only sixty miles. Time and again we had to remove obstacles from the track, pull the Land Rover out of ruts and grind round innumerable bends. Finally our vehicle would take us no further. Bubu, a half- breed, who was guiding us, ran ahead of us for an hour and cleared the way of creatures. Without his precautions we should twice have run into spiders' webs of a size you simply cannot imagine. The It was precisely because the stones near Piedras Blancas lay deep in the jungle that I had wanted to see them with my own eyes. It is said that these balls are only a few hundred years old. No one who has stood there as I have could believe that. The jungle itself is primaeval and I am convinced that the balls must have lain there before the luxuriant vegetation began to thrive. Today we have managed to 'transplant' Abu Simbel to another site using all kinds of modern machinery, but I doubt whether we could deposit balls like these in a primaeval forest. Most of these mysterious balls are made of granite or lava. There is little chance nowadays of finding out the exact number of stone balls that once existed. Today many fine specimens decorate gardens and parks and public buildings. Since one ancient saga also related that gold could be found in the middle of the balls, many of them have been hacked to bits with hammer and chisel. A strange thing is that there are no quarries for producing the balls anywhere near the sites where they have been found. As in other places any trace that could lead us back to the 'manufacturers' is missing. During the clearing of woods and swamps at the foot of the Cordillera Brunquera in the Rio Diquis district in 1940 and 1941, the archaeologist Doris Z. Stone discovered several artificial stones. She wrote a detailed account of them that closes with the resigned remark: 'The balls of Costa Rica must be numbered among the unsolved megalithic puzzles of the world.' poisonous bite of these loathsome creatures can be fatal. At last we stood before two enormous balls, both taller than we were, in the midst of the virgin forest. I saw still more balls in Costa Rica. Fifteen giant balls lie in a dead straight line in Golfo Dulce. I found twelve balls near the village of Uvita north of the Sierra Brunquera. Four balls have been excavated from the muddy bed of the River Esquina. There are two balls on Camaronal Island and several balls on the summit of the Cordillera Brunquera in the neighbourhood of the River Diquis. In fact, we do not know who made the stone balls; we do not know what tools were used for the work; we do not know for what purpose the balls were cut out of the granite and we do not know when they