Jungle Trek Day 2

Up whenever (all I know is it was light out), had a simple breakfast, then we headed on a day hike. Amazing jungle, we stopped at a remote waterfall/swimming hole for lunch and a swim for an hour or more. As I was climbing up part of the waterfall, I put my hand on a rock to hoist myself up, and felt something squishy under my hand. I lifted my hand up and there was a frog or toad there, kind of camoflouged with the rock. He didn't move, I thought maybe I killed him, so grabbed a leave and poked him and he hopped away. Then I was hoping that he wasn't poisonous!

This day trek involved no paths much of the time, our guide needed to use his machete to hack away at the forest to clear a path for parts of it. I was imagining what it would have been like for the first explorers.

We were gone for maybe 3-4 hours on the hike, once we got back, Tracy and me went to go to the shower waterfall to wash away the sweat and along the path near the waterfall a big green snake, perhaps 2-3 feet long was blocking our way. We had no idea if it was poisonous or not, so decided to just rince off in the stream instead of trying to cross paths with the snake. The snake just sat there in the spray of the waterfall for quite a while, his head up, before finally meandering his way back into the jungle. He wasn't too concerned with us.

Supper was an amazing pasta dish with lots of bacon on it. So delicious. Wow.

After supper, it's pitch black and we start seeing glimpses of light through the jungle. I just thought it was those insects with the glowing eyes at first, but after watching them for a bit, we started to realize it was flashlights. The guides seemed to be kind of concerned, talking to each other, then one of them got on their mobile and called someone (Omega tours, I think) for quite a while.

I kinda figured it was lost hikers, but Tracy thought it was drug dealers or other questionable folks of ill repute. She was a bit concerned, but I told her even if it is, there's not much we can do, we pretty much stuck where we are. Finally our guides headed off into the jungle to investigate and a few minutes later they came back carrying backpacks. It was a group of 7 or 8 locals from La Ceiba who got lost or didn't go very fast and lost track of time. 4 girls, including 3 fat chicks trying to make their way through steep jungle and many of them didn't even have flashlights. That's a disaster waiting to happen. To give you an idea of how out of their element the girls seemed to be, they needed help stepping across a <12-inch stream. One guy on each side holding her hand so she can get across. Holy crap. There's not much room for tents and this group had 3 big tents, so they comandeered the area where our guides were cooking and sleeping. I think our guides knew one or two of the other hikers as well. We found out the next morning that many of the hikers spoke perfect english as well, as we were chatting with them the following morning.