We stopped to look at a huntsman spider (Claire was not a fan) and saw some GIANT snails along the way. Went through the huge wishing tree (over 30 m tall and hollow almost all the way up) and down a path that went to the creek running @ the bottom of the hillside. There was a suspension bridge along with way, and since I was lagging behind I turned off my headlamp and did it in the pitch-black (and I mean PITCH-BLACK). Could cover/ no stars and in the middle of a dense, sub-tropical rainforest). It was awesome. I bounced up and down with each step and it was so fun. I told Claire to do the same when she came after me, but i turned on my light when she was 1/2 of the way across because she had started to hyperventilate.
Then I got up to a vine that KT and Annie were swinging on (u-shaped but about 6-8 cm thick) so I did THAT in the pitch-dark and that was fucking freaky/AMAZING. I was swinging back and fourth until Claire came down (about 2 min) and I waited until she was fairly close before I let out a loud cackle of "MWAH HAHAHAHAHAHA" and scared the shit out of her.
When we got down to the bottom of the creek we could see little green lights everywhere along the rocky protrusions from the track above. It was like a night sky full of green constellations. Our entire trip into the woods was a Nocturnal Disneyland.
We learned about how the worms live in mucus hammocks that they make, and catch prey in the mucus w/ their lights. The extra mucus looked like hanging icicles. So beautiful. Travis got some great shots of them but I can't put his photos up because i can't download anything on this computer.
Everyone headed back but Emily, Kelsey, Anna, myself, Rob, and Susan (our entomologist). We made out way back very slowly, stopping at all the bio-luminescing things, giant snails (baseball-sized), and critters. When Emily and I got to the suspension bridge we turned off out lights and we could see the stars up above us, and the green bio-luminescing constellations below.
THEN on our way back Susan saw a reflection off of her headlamp on a tree and pointed it out to Kelsey and myself. We thought she was insane. She kept describing where it was (on a tree 25 m away) we couldn't see anything on the tree. We walked off the trail to the tree and after a couple of minutes we spotted a gecko in the side of the tree. Impossible to see apart from the "eye reflection" (which I still couldn't see) and a very faint white line on its underbelly.
Rob caught up and got the spotlight on it and we moved around to see it from the front, but we lost it in its camouflage. we eventually saw it, though we still couldn't see the tail (it was a leaf-tailed gecko). Rob scampered up 8 m on the tree holing on to nothing but vines and grabbed the gecko. An amazing feat as he is aged-looking (65+?) and there were no branched low enough to grab on to.
We passed it around and IT WAS SO AMAZING. It loved me the most. It stayed still in everyone else's hands, but he licked me twice and then scaled my chest up to my neck.
What a night. When we got back i finally broke down and showered, (as my foot-funk was reaching biohazard levels) and I put on my old spice deodorant because it is cool enough to use it here without it melting.
Inside the wishing tree
Jack
Jack
Travis
Jack
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