Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Night Hike

Yesterday's post was all about our day in the rainforest, today, it's a few shots from our night. After dinner, Leo took us out for a night hike through the forest.


Leo led the way, checking for snakes. Actually, his walking stick always led the way, alerting any unsuspecting snakes before he walked through an area.

We each had flashlights. You would think they would scare away the critters, and they probably scared some, but the flashlights were really handy for picking out the reflecting eyes of insects, the blob of a snake on a leaf, and the hairy legs of a tarantula.


So, what did we see? A lot of insects mostly, and no two were alike {except for the army of army ants and the lines of leaf cutter ants}. Do you see the leaf cutter ants in the photo above? They're carrying their treasures back to their colony. I love the leaf cutters and will blather on about them in another post.

First prize for the evening goes to the tarantula. Do you see it in the photo below? Put your pointer right in the middle of that photo and you're looking at the body of the tarantula. Nothing in the photo really gives you a good perspective of scale, but the furry guy was at least five inches across!!! {!}  I'm sure our eyes were about that wide when we saw it.



In my book, second prize goes to the glowing click beetle. Unfortunately, I was the only one to see it before it scurried away, which isn't as exciting as seeing it with someone so you can both talk about how amazing/crazy it was. Seeing two green glowing dots that look like eyes? crazy.


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