Welcome to the Jungle

Going into the jungle takes some preparation - lots of water, insect repellent, long pants and hiking boots, food, and a lighter to kill leeches if necessary. I was very hopeful that I'd get to use the lighter. I was hoping of course that I'd get to use it on Michael and not the other way around.



The humidity must have been close to 100% so even though the temperature was in the mid-80s we were both dripping wet before even hitting our first trail. Our first stop was the canopy walk, a creaky, narrow "bridge" that spanned the treetops. The height of the bridges ranged from 50 to 150 feet. It was very cool.









After the canopy walk we continued climbing straight uphill for about an hour. During our hike I stopped to take a picture of an enormous ant. While I was bent over I heard this rumbling in the woods behind me and then Michael yells, "there's a wild boar." I turned around to see two baby boars ripping across the trail. They move very fast and did not look very friendly. We saw a guide a few moments later who told us we were very lucky to see the boars as they're usually not that close to the park entrance.

After reaching the summit we then started our hike straight down hill. I think somewhere along the way we got a little lost as we stopped seeing other hikers and the path seemed to get very narrow. At one point we followed a sign that pointed toward our destination but had scratched on it "bad path, felled trees." We took that path anyway and sure enough spent a lot of time climbing over big felled trees.



This little detour did, however, bring about the most exciting part of the hike. As we're wandering about sweating profusely Michael feels a little bite on his leg, lifts up his pant leg and finds this little critter.



I was pretty excited and started fishing around for the lighter not knowing exactly what I was going to do with it. Not wanting to be accused of overkill and not wanting to get a 3rd degree burn, Michael suggested maybe I try spraying it with insect repellent first. While this was less fun for me it was probably safer for him and the result was still pretty cool. The leech instantly curled up and bright red blood started gushing and the little critter just kept hanging on. We finally flicked him off with a stick and inspected the damage.

Once one gets on you it becomes an obsession where you're convinced that every little pinch or scratch is a leech. Right after we got Michael's off I found two on my shoe trying to crawl into my sock. They are ruthless. At this point I started to get wigged out and kept repeating, "this is freaking me out, let's keep moving." They seem to love it when you stop moving so they can just hop on your shoes and dig in. When we finally got home a few hours later we checked obsessively for more leeches and scolding ourselves for not taking more video of the whole leech episode.

On the way out of town the next day we passed two noteworthy bathrooms. The first one has a sign that says, "Don't go here - snakes inside" (yikes). The second was just a really poor excuse for a toilet.