A walk in the rainforest.

Or “We have a WHAT in our bathroom?”

After a not-too-sound of sleep, I was ready for our early morning rainforest trek. I was excited to see some wildlife but feeling a bit wary of leeches. I cannot think of a more disgusting pest.

A short tuk tuk ride later, we had met up with our guide and were good to go. First step to entering the rainforest: Salting your shoes and socks. The salt keeps the leeches away and I was keen to keep the leeches away.

Our early arrival allowed for us to see quite a bit of wildlife. We saw a snail, several millipedes, a viper, a few chameleons, several monkeys, and a tarantula.

Seeing the tarantula settled a bit of curiosity we’d had since arriving at our hotel. While checking out the bathroom I noticed something. I called Mike in for a look. I believe my exact words were, “Hey Mike? Are you afraid of spiders? Because we have a pretty big one in here.” Take note of how calm I sounded there. Although Mike is not afraid of spiders… the look on his face was priceless. I’ll leave it at that.

After discovering our house guest we kept the bathroom door firmly closed. Every so often we’d do a little check to see what he was up to. One of his favorite hangouts was the toilet. Kind of inconvenient. At dinner we asked the proprietress if any poisonous spiders lived nearby. She assured us they did not. We weren’t too worried. In fact, we put our hands right up next to the spider for photos to show its giant size. No big deal. Then we showed our rainforest guide our friend… he chunkled. “Tarantula!” Oh. Ooops! I wasn’t too sad to leave that hotel behind.

But back to the hike… it was a nice quiet walk in the woods. We were seeing wildlife and learning valuable information about the guest living in our bathroom. Then we reached the river. The guide looked at me and said, “Now. We cross. No trousers.” “Um, no trousers?” “No trousers.” “Oohhkaay… no trousers.” We decided to just change into our swimsuits in anticipation of a planned swim further down the trail. A little privacy would have been nice. Despite my attempts to convince Mike that the guide was not watching him… he was totally watching him. Kind of awkward. Kind of whatever.

Reaching the waterfall was worth dropping trou in front of a stranger. The water was a bit chilly but nice to swim in. Sticking my wet legs back into my jeans? Not so pleasant.

After the hike we went back to our hotel to rest, have lunch, and bid farewell to our pet tarantula. We were off to see some elephants!

xo, jill