Jungle Trek Day 1

Up whenever and had breakfast. Met our guides, they speak no english.

It was a 15 minute truck ride to the start of the hike.

Super difficult hike. It started by fjording the Rio Cangrejal river (about waist deep), then a short hike in the jungle to a waterfall and a swimming hole, which was pretty cold but cool.

The rest of the hike was very hard, up and up and up, steep up, grabbing into tree roots or trees or rocks to pull yourself up. And talk about sweat. Both Tracy and me have not ever sweated so much before, flowing off of us in the humidity of the jungle. And the trail was barely visible, if you didn't have guides you'd have no idea how to get there.

We got up in record time, they say it;s 4-4.5 hours up. When we made it to the camp site, I checked the time, it was 12:15, so like 3 hours. The camping area is at the top of a huge waterfall. It's a very small camping area, not much room for many people. They setup our tent on a little tent area and setup a big tarp where they will sleep under and do the cooking.

A few minutes back from the camping area is the toilet area, a small clearing in the jungle where you dig a hole with a small shovel, do your business, then cover it back up. Just past that is another waterfall that you can stand under and shower. Amazingly beautiful and thick jungle and steep cliff walls all around.

During the afternoon the guides disappeared, scrounging the forest for dead wood for a fire. They were gone for probably an hour. Other than admire the beauty of the jungle, there's not much to do and you certainly can't explore, you'd easily get lost and would need a machete at that to hack through the jungle. So we read a lot!

As it started to get dark, the guides started up a fire, getting ready to cook. Then we started seeing these insects that I assumed were fireflies. A closer look showed that they had two glowing "eyes", some green, some orange, fluttering around the jungle. It was sooo cool. One of them landed on a guide and he picked it up and showed it to us. Two bright glowing eyes on the head. They fly around for an hour or so after dusk, then they go away for the night.

Supper was amazing. Chicken fajita's, whole chicken legs (large ones) done up right over the fire, with some salsa and wraps, most amazing trek supper I've had ever. We also hauled up some rum, so Tracy and I had some of the that and shared some with our guides.

I also ate termites for the first time. On the way up, the guide showed us a termite mound, and he ate some so I tried them to.

Even though they didn't speak english, he could always get his point across, so we got along fine.