This seems to be the month of my life for bringing all of my irrational fears to the surface. The night hike completely fell in line with that. We started out at dusk but almost as soon as we went into the jungle, the fading light mixed with the canopy put us in darkness. And of course I know this, but this land is ALIVE. There are different sounds in every direction. Different movements from all directions. It is wicked and unknown and scary. But on I went. We were looking for nocturnal animals but also insects and monkeys and bats. Well, what you see more than anything else in the jungle are insects. Of course that’s true but I guess I didn’t realize just how true it was! And insects you see the most of our spiders. And I’m not talking about the little baby spiders I find in my house in North Carolina, I’m talking about massive, hairy spiders with spikes! I’m talking about scorpions and tarantulas. They were incredibly cool but seriously got me riled up. My heart rate definitely went way up and I felt claustrophobic.

We spent a couple of hours in the jungle before returning for a nice dinner and bed. As I went to wash up for dinner, I was greeted with a giant cockroach as well as a giant spider in my room. It’s official now, I’m like a little girl around these huge bugs! I managed to kill the spider but left for dinner with the roach in my room. After returning from dinner, he’d brought friends in the form of large ants. Now, I’m embarrassed about this but I have to tell it. I ran for my cabin to Roberto’s to see if this was normal. I swear I sounded like a small whiny child. He acted like it was nothing but I knew I couldn’t sleep like that. So I asked my new friend Jen to bunk in her cabin. Yes, I was too afraid of the dark to sleep alone. And although embarrassed, I think I’m going to crash in her cabin for the rest of the week. Completely irrational, but there it is. I’ve vowed to try to reduce this fear a bit this week. Honestly I don’t think I have a choice. Needless to say, when I actually got to sleep around 3 AM, I dreamed of creepy crawlers! We’ll see how tomorrow goes.