We rose early again this morning, had a light breakfast of pineapple, grapefruit, papaya, and toast, and met in the main house at 8 a.m. to start our Mayflower Rainforest hike. The intensity level was advertised as “rigorous,” but they also had said that the black bean soup the night before would be spicy, and it had no heat whatsoever. Based on that, we figured that they wanted to weed out the people who couldn’t handle a little uphill walk. Wrong! They were trying to weed out everyone. This hike was one of the most difficult physical activities that I can remember doing. It was worth it in the end though. We drove in vans out to the Mayflower Rainforest national park, and began our hike up to 750 feet above sea level. The first part was easygoing enough, mostly flat with a few moderate inclines and downhills, very muddy. Golden and Lorenzo, our guides, pointed out interesting plants and animals along the way. We saw a cacao bean tree, a rubber tree, philodendrons, cohune palms (where we get hearts of palm from, and I learned that it involves cutting down the entire tree to get it, so I don’t think I’ll be eating those again), coconut palms, bastard palms (covered in needle sharp spikes that hurt like hell, and the only way to soothe the pain is to cut down the palm to get at the liquid inside), tourist trees (whose bark is reddish and peeling like a bad sunburn), leafcutter ants, soldier ants, toucans, hummingbirds, and a 6’ long black rat snake — I spotted it myself on the way back down the mountain, shrieked like a little girl and hauled ass back towards the visitor center. Nish volunteered to eat a termite from a mound in the […]