Indians And Pilgrims And Termites, Oh My!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

I hope you all enjoyed your holiday and did your part for the economy and went shopping on Friday.

When the opportunity came to spend Thanksgiving in the rainforest, Drew and I could not turn it down. Besides I was vaccinated for everything under the sun anyway so it seemed a waste not to put modern medicine to the test. Does it live up to the hype? Yes. The spiders are bigger than your hand, the piranas eat anything, and monkeys will throw things at you if you piss them off.

I knew that it would be hot, but I wasn´t prepared for the combination of upper 90´s and over 90% humidity. Drew and I asked for an air conditioned room at the lodge we westayed at. They just stared at us. Apparently they get that joke a lot.

Periodically you will hear someone mention the law of the jungle. As far as I can tell, these are the laws:

Law 1 - It is hot. You will stink. Get over it. And don´t raise your arms too high.

Law 2 - Don´t drink anything less than Black Label. Chances are something will kill you tomorrow so don´t let your last drink be cheap.

Law 3 - Parrots bite.

Law 4 - A third of the creatures out there want you dead. The other two-thirds really don´t care either way, so watch where you step.

We were the only Americans at the lodge on Thanksgiving, but everyone was wonderful and cooked us up a great Thanksgiving dinner - turkey, stuffing, termites... Just kidding about the turkey and stuffing. However, we did eat termites for Thanksgiving. Not surprisingly they taste like wood. This picture has nothing to do with dinner. We didn´t eat the frog.

A gigantic tarantula that lived about about 10 yards from where we slept.
















Parrots eating clay. The clay contains an enzyme that parrots need to help them digest some of the plants around the Amazon.

A Saddleback Tamarin trying to figure out if I am a threat or not. I was trying to figure out if he was dinner or not. He wasn´t.