August 27
I had my first foray into the jungle today. I was awoken last night by Kevin, who asked if the opossum had come into my room. Well, not that I was aware of! So he looked around and the coast was clear. So I tried to get back to sleep. I did, finally…after the shock of humidity wore off. I turned on my hand held fan again for a little while until I cooled off.
Then, at who knows what time, I heard something. It was still dark. What IS that? Am I dreaming? It couldn’t be manmade. I’m in the middle of freekin nowhere. It must be an animal but what could possibly make that sound? It sounded like a UFO was landing. A big flying saucer was landing in the clearing, that must be it. Then the toucans started up and the UFO noise never came back. It was still dark so I went back to sleep. Apparently I slept too late since I woke up and then soon thereafter, found out my breakfast was ready. I asked Kevin what that sound was. Howler monkeys. They didn’t sound like the ones I was used to. These are red howlers and I’ve only heard black ones. These are far creepier sounding. The only thing I can compare it to are those movies where researchers are living in Antarctica. They open the door to the outside and the wind is howling at like 2000 miles an hour. The monkeys state their presence to the other troops, so when one stops, another one starts soon thereafter. It is a cool way to wake up, albeit a bit early for my taste.
We took off into the jungle around 8:30 and let me give you a word of advice: don’t bother bringing your antiperspirant. It won’t work. I’m only partially kidding, but I found out what 100% humidity was all about. We were off to the bat cave and I had no idea how far it was. I only brought 1 bottle of water. After about an hour 1/2 or so we saw the sign to the cave. I figured it was just around the bend. It was not. It took another 45 minutes to an hour to get there. However, along the way, Kevin pointed out a nest of bullet ants. Wow, were they huge! I’d say at least an inch 1/2 long. He knocked on the little tree they were at the base of with his machete and they came running out. I got nowhere near them! I did get some video of them because the pictures just don’t do them justice.
So we end up at the cave and he says, “There are no bats here.” What? I want my money back! But we stepped up in there and shined a light around and sure enough, some came flying out. Not many, but at least they were there. Then Kevin found a relative of the tarantula on the ceiling guarding a big white egg sac. She didn’t budge. Thankfully. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. The sac looked kind of like a squashed marshmallow. Then he found one of those odd scorpion spiders. He said that if you get bitten by one, you’ll cough up blood for a while and get very sleepy. Probably won’t die unless you’re allergic to them. I, once again, kept my distance.
Some of the other animals we saw along the trail was a single male spider monkey, a couple of centipedes, a few morpho butterflies, four dung beetles (they were small) and heard a lot of weird bird calls.
The trails were fairly muddy due to the rain last night and we had to cross a couple of creeks but overall, I managed to stay fairly clean. When we got back, the creek here looked pretty inviting so I took a dip…but not all the way in. It was the first time I had goosebumps since I arrived in Guyana!
Solo Guyana 