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The Forest by Day
You can always expect rain in the rainforest, and September is the height of the wet season. Bill chose whether we would hike or drive partly based on the likelihood of downpour, and we were rained upon only once all week when hiking in the forest. But rain poured down at some point every day and night, and the forest floor was a slippery mix of wet leaves, goopy muck and slimy clay. That's what our feet noticed the most. What our eyes noticed the most was the fantastic mosaic of shades of green. There are approximately 2.3 zillion different plant species in the forest, so everywhere you look is a slightly different shade than everywhere else. Mostly we hiked in the shade of the canopy, but occasionally the trail would enter a clearing and give us a spectacular view of fog-shrouded forest hills. |
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| Of course, most of the time we weren't admiring the beautiful scenery -- we were instead studying the forest floor and branches for small movements and imperfect camouflage. There's no telling how many coiled snakes and immobile leaf-mimic frogs we walked past, though the number is certainly huge. Even so, on a typical morning hike we might discover five or six types of frogs, a similar number of lizards, and perhaps a snake or two. Sometimes we'd capture them for later photography, but if they were cooperative enough I'd try to photograph them in place. | |||
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| A childhood dream of Maria's was to swing from a vine in the jungle. Ignoring semantic debates about "jungle" vs. "rainforest", she found her opportunity here. One of the locals knew of a good swinging vine, so we incorporated it into our morning hike. The low light and my slow film meant I couldn't get a good action shot, but this photo should provide some sort of evidence for Maria's friends that she has now officially swung from a vine in the jungle. | |||
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| Next: Not-so-candid Camera |
