Another post on my journey to the Amazon has been published over at Gadling. Today I talk about the night I spent camping in the jungle, which was a unique experience to say the least.
The guide service I traveled with had a permanent camp established inside the rainforest, which included tents set-up on wooden platforms to keep them off the jungle floor. As you can imagine, the jungle was extremely damp and humid, and the ground was generally muddy, so in order to keep the tents in place, and keep them dry, the platforms were built. This also helps to establish a more permanent campsite in the sense that the jungle wouldn't be able to reclaim it so easily as well, and with the speed at which things grow there, that is an important consideration.
On my night in the jungle, we had a thunderstorm crashing overhead, and steady rain falling well into the early morning hours. That rain did little to effect the creatures that live in the jungle however, as the continued to make noises throughout the night, which meant that I fell asleep to the sounds of the rainforest while the storm continued over head. It was a surprisingly tranquil and soothing way to drift off, and made for a very pleasant night from my perspective, although some of my traveling companions were a bit more put off by the sounds.
In order to reach the camp, we had to trek for several miles into the jungle. This area of the Amazon was different from some of the other places we had hiked, and it offered more clearly defined "high ground". As a result, we came across trees that reached 70 feet in the air, and created a dense canopy overhead that let little light in, and prevented much of the rain from reaching the jungle floor. The size and scope of the place really hit home, and it was hard not feel very small.
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